Best Selling Books by Joseph Lelyveld

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. “A revelation. . . . Lelyveld has restored human depth to the Mahatma.”—Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination. India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

"The text of this Large Print edition is unabridged."

The profoundly moving family history of one of America's greatest newspapermen. As his father lies dying, Joseph Lelyveld finds himself in the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where Arthur Lelyveld was the celebrated rabbi. Nicknamed "the memory boy" by his parents, the fifty-nine-year-old son begins to revisit the portion of his father's life recorded in letters, newspaper clippings, and mementos stored in a dusty camp trunk. In an excursion into an unsettled and shakily recalled period of his boyhood, Lelyveld uses these artifacts, and the journalistic reporting techniques of his career as an author and editor, to investigate memories that have haunted him in adult life.. With equal measures of candor and tenderness, Lelyveld unravels the tangled story of his father and his mother, a Shakespeare scholar whose passion for independence led her to recoil from her roles as a clergyman's wife and, for a time, as a mother. This reacquired history of his sometimes troubled family becomes the framework for the author's story; in particular, his discovery in early adolescence of the way personal emotions cue political choices, when he is forced to choose sides between his father and his own closest adult friend, a colleague of his father's who is suddenly dismissed for concealing Communist ties. Lelyveld's effort to recapture his family history takes him on an unforeseen journey past disparate landmarks of the last century, including the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964. His excursion becomes both a meditation on the selectivity and unreliability of memory and a testimony to the possibilities, even late in life, for understanding and healing. In Omaha Blues, as Lelyveld seeks out the truth of his life story, he evokes a remarkable moment in our national story with unforgettable poignancy.

'महात्मा गांधीं आणि त्यांचा भारतीय संघर्ष' (ग्रेट सोल महात्मा गांधी) हे पुस्तक गांधींच्या जीवनाचा सर्वांगीण वेध घेतं. गांधींनी पाहिलेली मोठ्या कार्याची स्वप्ने, सामाजिक मूल्यांचे त्यांना आलेले भान आणि अहिंसक प्रतिरोधाचे त्यांचे तत्त्वज्ञान परक्या उपखंडात (दक्षिण आफ्रिकेत त्यांनी घालविलेल्या दोन दशकांत) कसे फुलले, पोसले गेले आणि त्यांना 'महात्मा' म्हणून डोक्यावर घेणाऱ्या भारताने त्यांची तत्त्वं कशी पायदळी तुडवली, याचे वर्णन या पुस्तकात आहे. महात्मा गांधी एक प्रतिष्ठीत वकील, जो राजकीय आणि सामाजिक कृति-कार्यक्रमांना स्वत ला वाहून घेताना पंचा गुंडाळलेला संन्यासी कसा होतो याचे मनोज्ञ दर्शन या पुस्तकातून घडते.

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments - his success in seizing India's imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country's minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi's sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of non-violent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent - during two decades in South Africa - and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or "Great Soul," while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history's most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic - and tragic - last months of this selfless leader's long campaign when his non-violent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his assassination. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi's extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death, still ensures that he occupies a key position in India's social conscience -and not just India's.

In this ambitious, original study, Pulitzer Prize-winner Lelyveld sets out to measure Gandhi's accomplishments as a politician and an advocate for the downtrodden--against Gandhi's own expectations and in light of his complex, conflicted feelings about his place in Indian history.

Beschrijving van het dagelijkse leven in Zuid-Afrika waar zowel blank als zwart de gevolgen van de rassenwetten ondervinden.