A legendary figure in his own lifetime, Rabbi Eliahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720-1797) was known as the "Gaon of Vilna." He was the acknowledged master of Talmudic studies in the vibrant intellectual center of Vilna, revered throughout Eastern Europe for his learning and his ability to traverse with ease seemingly opposed domains of thought and activity. After his death, the myth that had been woven around him became even more powerful and was expressed in various public images. The formation of these images was influenced as much by the needs and wishes of those who clung to and depended on them as by the actual figure of the Gaon. In this penetrating study, Immanuel Etkes sheds light on aspects of the Vilna Gaon's "real" character and traces several public images of him as they have developed and spread from the early nineteenth century until the present.
The third volume in the best selling "DALES" series
Gervase Phinn, school inspector, begins his third year with a spring in his step for in April he will marry Christine Bentley, head teacher of Winnery Nook School. But before then he has to suffer the wicked repartee of his fellow inspectors on the subjects of love and marriage. The well-named Mrs Savage still attempts to exert her power via incomprehensible memos, and Connie continues to rule the Staff Development Centre with a broom of iron and duster of disapproval at any dirty marks. In the schools themselves Gervase Phinn faces every challenge with humour that is rarely far from the surface.
'Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: Education, education, education.' Those were the bold words of Tony Blair, before he became Prime Minister. A decade on, has he succeeded in making our schools the envy of the world? For FRANK CHALK, there's only one answer. Chalk has spent his adult life in the modern education system, so - unlike the Prime Minister - he knows what he's talking about. He is an ordinary teacher in an ordinary British school... a school where the kids get drunk, beat up the teachers and take drugs - when they can be bothered to turn up. 'IT’S YOUR TIME YOU'RE WASTING' is the blackly humorous diary of a year in his working life. Chalk confiscates porn, booze and trainers, fends off angry parents and worries about the few conscientious pupils he comes across, recording his experiences in a dry and very readable manner. He offers top tips for dealing with unruly children, muses on the shortcomings of the staff (including his own) and even spots the occasional spark of hope amid all the despair. His book will horrify (and amuse) millions of parents and will become a must-read for many of the country‘s 400,000 teachers.
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Evocative and quietly mesmerizing, Thad Ziolkowski’s On a Wave is a poignant look back at adolescence, a memoir of his surfing years that Time magazine called "a sun-bleached 1960s period piece—a wistful, white-collar daydream." As a disenchanted, unemployed English professor, Thad decides one day to sneak away from his temp job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. In the meager cold waves, he contemplates how he could have possibly become a semidepressed, chain-smoking, aimless man when for a few shining years of his boyhood, he was invincible. His lapsed love affair with the ocean begins amid the late-sixties counterculture in coastal Florida. After his parents’ divorce, nine-year-old Thad escapes from his difficult family—notably a new brooding and explosive stepfather—by heading for the thrilling, uncharted waters of the local beach. In the embrace of the surf, he is able to stay offshore for years, until his life is upended once again, this time by a double tragedy that deposits him at a crossroads between a life in the waves and a life on land. Lyrical and disarmingly funny, On a Wave is a glorious portrait of youth that reminds readers of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time.
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This is a warm, funny and mostly true account of the first year that Gervase Phinn spent as a schools' inspector in North Yorkshire. His brilliantly portrayed cast includes his fellow inspectors who range from endearing to eccentric, sporting lords of the manor, Ministry bigwigs, formidable teaching nuns and a very attractive head-teacher who happens to be single, adding up to an enchanting montage of experiences. But it is the children themselves who steal the show, whether fresh-faced from the farms or worldly-wise from the towns. Gervase Phinn is a born raconteur who has transferred his talents to the written word with outstanding success.
Phinn returns to the Dales for a second slice of Yorkshire life.
Continuing where THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DALE ended, Gervase Phinn begins his second year as a schools inspector in Yorkshire. His colourful cast of characters are now becoming firm favourites - the mostly mad staff at County Hall, the teachers who range from saints to stand-ins, and of course the children themselves who find ways of embarrassing school inspectors with innocent ease. Gervase's colleagues rag him unmercifully about his faraway look whenever the name of Christine Bentley of WinneryNook Nursery and Primary School is mentioned, and he realises it is time to take action - but how to put the question? Gervase Phinn has an extraordinary talent to entertain, and OVER HILL AND DALE will make you laugh out loud.
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