Library Journal
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Join this former MacArthur fellow on his incredible journey to revive interest in the Yiddish language and culture. Part memoir and part history, this is the compelling tale of how Lansky retrieved thousands of books from dumpsters and abandoned buildings across America. He also rescued books from the aftermath of the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires and went to Havana to save the few remaining Yiddish books of a vestigial Jewish community there. Throughout, Lansky shares inspiring anecdotes and references to a dazzling array of Yiddish writers. In the words of scholar Max Weinreich, Lansky shows us that Yiddish was the product of "two dialectical forces one rooted in Hebrew and Aramaic texts" and the other rooted in everyday life. In the end, a provocative question lingers: How could the very "people of the book" have discarded Yiddish books and culture? One can only be comforted with the fact that, thanks in large measure to the efforts of Lansky and the National Yiddish Book Center, which he founded, Yiddish literature survives. This important book is highly recommended for the general reading public and all libraries.-Herbert E. Shapiro, Empire State Coll., SUNY at Rochester (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Engaging first-person account of how some committed young people rescued from history's dustbin more than a million books published in Yiddish. In prose that sometimes lurches and jolts along like the overloaded rental trucks that the author and his merry band used to collect books, Lansky unfolds a tale of rare emotion and devotion. He was only 23, in 1980, when he made the decision to dedicate himself to the cause of saving books in Yiddish. He had begun studying the language while at Hampshire College and was shocked to discover that many libraries were discarding Yiddish works by the thousands because so few circulated. His account of his rescue efforts takes the form of an adventure story, related with a breathless and appealing Andy Hardy earnestness. The author and his companions pluck books from Dumpsters in the rain, from closing libraries, from damp garages and basements, from dour doubters, from aging Jews who surrender them like favorite children—with flowing tears, many tales, and much food. They make harrowing missions to Russia and Cuba. But it all pays off: Lanksy now oversees a huge enterprise comprising a state-of-the-art facility, the National Yiddish Book Center, and a membership of some 35,000 supporters. He is digitizing the volumes, virtually all of which were printed on paper whose acid content assures disintegration. The purpose of the Book Center is not to hoard but to distribute the volumes. It maintains a core collection but considers putting books into the hands of readers among its chief purposes, in addition to making sure key titles are in libraries where scholars can consult them. Lansky also chronicles the history of Yiddish, his fundraising efforts (considerably accelerated by a 1989 MacArthur genius grant), and his countless public appearances (including a funny episode at a Catskills resort). A rollicking ride in company with a man who has performed an enormously important public service. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Lansky was a 23-year-old graduate student in 1980 when he came up with an idea that would take over his life and change the face of Jewish literary culture: He wanted to save Yiddish books. With few resources save his passion and ironlike determination, Lansky and his fellow dreamers traveled from house to house, Dumpster to Dumpster saving Yiddish books wherever they could find them-eventually gathering an improbable 1.5 million volumes, from famous writers like Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer to one-of-a-kind Soviet prints. In his first book, Lansky charmingly describes his adventures as president and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, which now has new headquarters at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. To Lansky, Yiddish literature represented an important piece of Jewish cultural history, a link to the past and a memory of a generation lost to the Holocaust. Lansky's account of salvaging books is both hilarious and moving, filled with Jewish humor, conversations with elderly Jewish immigrants for whom the books evoke memories of a faraway past, stories of desperate midnight rescues from rain-soaked Dumpsters, and touching accounts of Lansky's trips to what were once thriving Jewish communities in Europe. The book is a testimony to his love of Judaism and literature and his desire to make a difference in the world. Agent, Carol Mann. (Oct. 1) Forecast: A Jewish Book Council-sponsored national tour should help put this at the forefront of books of Jewish interest this fall and lead to handsome sales. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Aaron Lansky discovered while studying Yiddish in the 1970s that thousands of Yiddish books were collecting dust in attics and basements or were being carted off to landfills. With no resources beyond his conviction, chutzpah, and fortitude, he set out to "save the world's Yiddish books" and soon found himself driving all over creation to visit with elderly Jews who talked with great emotion about the beloved Yiddish books they were entrusting to him. The obstacles to his quixotic quest were many, and Lansky became a bibliographic superhero, racing through rain and snow to rescue imperiled collections. Fortuitously, the angels his mission required appeared, and today the organization he founded, the National Yiddish Book Center, collects and redistributes Yiddish books all over the world. Lansky has been written about, but there's no substitute for his own upbeat and profoundly moving account of his adventures and success in preventing the extinction of a uniquely expressive language and literature of survival. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2004 Booklist