Hilton Obenzinger's Books

American Palestine

Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania

By: Hilton Obenzinger

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American Palestine

Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania

By: Hilton Obenzinger

In the nineteenth century, American tourists, scholars, evangelists, writers, and artists flocked to Palestine as part of a "Holy Land mania." Many saw America as a New Israel, a modern nation chosen to do God's work on Earth, and produced a rich variety of inspirational art and literature about their travels in the original promised land, which was then part of Ottoman-controlled Palestine. In American Palestine, Hilton Obenzinger explores two "infidel texts" in this tradition: Herman Melville's Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876) and Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress (1869). As he shows, these works undermined in very different ways conventional assumptions about America's divine mission. In the darkly philosophical Clarel, Melville found echoes of Palestine's apparent desolation and ruin in his own spiritual doubts and in America's materialism and corruption. Twain's satiric travelogue, by contrast, mocked the romantic naiveté of Americans abroad, noting the incongruity of a "fantastic mob" of "Yanks" in the Holy Land and contrasting their exalted notions of Palestine with its prosaic reality. Obenzinger demonstrates, however, that Melville and Twain nevertheless shared many colonialist and orientalist assumptions of the day, revealed most clearly in their ideas about Arabs, Jews, and Native Americans. Combining keen literary and historical insights and careful attention to the context of other American writings about Palestine, this book throws new light on the construction of American identity in the nineteenth century.

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Page Count

338

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691216320

ISBN 13

9780691216324

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

By: Hilton Obenzinger,Paul Auster

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Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

By: Hilton Obenzinger,Paul Auster

Zosia Goldberg's heroic and startling tale of surviving the Nazi Genocide begins with the siege of Warsaw, whereafter Goldberg escaped the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewer and went on to survive the Holocaust posing as a Gentile. She was a débrouillarde, someone who could run through fire without getting burned. Hers is a story of resistance at every turn, of continual attempts at sabotage, of perpetually escaping and defeating the enemy. Her account is filled with unique energy and a wonder at the strangeness of human behavior. For not only did she suffer bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, she also encountered the unexpected sympathies of Nazis, and was at many times aided by her very tormentors. This is not just a story of the Holocaust, but of a woman struggling to make sense of human folly and depravity.

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Page Count

210

Publisher

Mercury House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1562791354

ISBN 13

9781562791353

American Palestine

Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania

By: Hilton Obenzinger

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American Palestine

Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania

By: Hilton Obenzinger

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

338

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691216320

ISBN 13

9780691216324

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

By: Hilton Obenzinger,Paul Auster

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Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

By: Hilton Obenzinger,Paul Auster

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

210

Publisher

Mercury House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1562791354

ISBN 13

9781562791353

Book's by Hilton Obenzinger

American Palestine

American Palestine

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

American Palestine

American Palestine

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust

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