Book: Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky

[Erudite]

Title: Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
Author: Aaron Lansky
Pages: 312
Genre: Non-Fiction

Ok...so I know you're going "yiddish books????" Yes, Yiddish books. If I am not looking for something specific at the library, I go to the front of a section and start with #1 and pull anything that sounds interesting. This book is 002 in the Dewey Decimal system. I like history, but my eyebrows too went up with the "rescued Yiddish books". Exactly how is that interesting?

But when I read the leaf, I was intrigued enough to take the book home. And for the next 3 days, whenever I got the chance around prepping for Christmas, I couldn't put the book down. It is that good. Aaron Lansky sets out to find Yiddish books, because he is studying Yiddish and can't find the books he needs. That was the late 70s. Through a series of interesting events, he figures out that those in America who HAVE the books, are the old people, the holocaust survivors...and those people are dying off. Their children, who should receive the books in inheritance, don't read Yiddish, and so the books are starting to be thrown away. Aaron realizes that if he doesn't do something an entire literature could be lost.

So in the early 80s he opens up a warehouse and sends out a press release and waits for the "deluge". A few weeks (and 2 boxes of books later) a reporter comes to cover his story. She's a little surprised that this might be a deluge, but writes the story anyway and it is picked up by the AP and ... the deluge happens, followed by a flood. Eventually, Aaron and his team are able to build their own state-of-the-art facility to house and digitize the books. So if in trivial pursuit, you ever get asked "which literature was the first to be digitized?" it's Yiddish and all because of Aaron Lansky.

This is a fascinating book. Aaron writes in an extremely engaging way and you meet so many great people along the way. I know it sounds kinda ...well, boring...but it's not. It was a completely fun book and I can recommend it to anyone.

[Meticulous madness]

I think it sounds interesting! I find it interesting, too, HOW you decide what to read, when you're not looking for something specific.

[Erudite]

Yep. It comes from a goal when I was a teenager to read the entire fiction section of the library and you may as well start in the "A" section to get that done. Of course, that quickly goes out the window, when you realize how much crap there is in the fiction section, but it's still a good way to start. I came home with 001 too, but it looked like it might be more than I want to bite off right now.