Books About The Lower East Side, Bialystok and Judaism

The Lower East Side Remembered & Revisited by Joyce Mendelsohn $12.95	“Joyce Mendelsohn gives an excellent walking tour of the Lower East Side pointing out landmarks with interesting facts and accurate accounts of the rich history here. Anyone who lives on the Lower East Side or whose relatives came from the Lower East Side should read this book complete with period and modern photographs. I loved it.”--Comments from a reader.
The Lower East Side Jews : An Immigrant Generation by Ronald Sanders $11.16	“Ronald Sanders' The Lower East Side Jews was formerly titled "The Downtown Jews": its reprint returns a classic to new audiences, providing a factual narrative which reads like fiction yet includes many important facts.”--Midwest Book Review
Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America by Hasia R. Diner $37.50	“From egg creams to the Yiddish theater, from "real" rye bread to Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, this "Jewish ghetto," as it was known in the 1920s, was thought to be the place where all Jews immigrated and lived. In this inventive and often startling reevaluation of popular belief, Diner (the Steinberg professor of Jewish American history at New York University) examines the historical reality of the Lower East Side.”--Publisher's Weekly
A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward Edited by Isaac Metzker Used & new from $3.49	"A Bintel Brief was a part of my life at a time when anything that is a part of your life is of crucial importance.... Isaac Metzker has reminded me of a debt I can never repay. Maybe you will help me. By reading this wonderful, wonderful book.”--Jerome Weidman, New York Times Book Review
NYC: Lower East Side 2005 by SoundWalk (Audio CD) $16.96	“Each SoundWalk is 50 minutes of walking adventure through a neighborhood, guided by a local personality, packed full of interviews and cinematic sound effects. SoundWalks are living documentaries about the city, but instead of experiencing it through the remoteness of your TV, you will savor the city in its reality.”--From the description “Listened to while walking on the prescribed route it becomes an intense, exhilarating, embodied experience.”--The Wire, April 2003
Six Heritage Tours of the Lower East Side: A Walking Guide by Ruth Limmer Lower East Side Tenement Museum $15.95	A guide to 6 communities in the area.
Irving Berlin's Lower East Side Songbook by Irving Berlin $14.95	“15 vaudeville-style songs from the early period of Berlin's brilliant career, arranged for piano and voice. Includes color illustrations of original sheet music, notes on each song, and a Berlin biography.”--From book's description.
Lower East Side Tourbook by Oscar Israelowitz $9.95	Guidebook written by a well known Jewish tour guide.
Guide to New York City Landmarks by New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission $17.47	“Produced by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, this is an authoritative, pocket-sized (5x8") guide to New York City's officially designated historical sites--in text, maps, photographs, and drawings. Tremendously valuable at a bargain price.”--From Book News (And Bialystoker Synagogue is in it!)
The WPA Guide to New York City : The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York (American Guide) by Federal Writers Project $13.97	“Anybody living in or visiting New York regularly will be fascinated to look up their favourite neighbourhoods to see what they were like in 1939.”--From a reader
Jewish Bialystok And Surroundings in Eastern Poland by Tomasz Wisniewski $12.95	“This book is both a travel guide and an informative short history of the Jewish experience in and around Bialystok, Poland (near Belarus). I recently journeyed to Bialystok with it as my guidebook. If you are thinking about going on a similar journey, this book is absolutely essential as both a guide (be sure to go on the walking tour of Bialystok) and as background reading. Even if you are not planning a trip, I still recommend this book for its rich collection of old photographs and lucid historical discussions.”--From a reader
The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World by Mimi Sheraton $10.36	“As many of us know, bialys are chewy, onion-topped rolls, delicious with a cream-cheese schmeer. They originated in Bialystok, Poland, from which they--and the Jews who made and cherished them--have all but disappeared. In The Bialy Eaters, food writer Mimi Sheraton traces the history of this traditional treat and recounts her pursuit of it from Manhattan's Lower East Side (now bialy central) to Bialystok and elsewhere.”--From Amazon.com (And she talks about the Bialystoker Synagogue).
Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki by Michel Mielnicki $13.56	A Holocaust memoir by Michel Mielnicki, who survived the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buna, Mittelbau-Dora and Belsen. Mielnicki takes us from the pleasures and charms of pre-war Polish Jewry (now entirely lost) into some of the darkest places of the 20th century. Tilford Bartman says, "In particular it is highly informative regarding events in the Bialystok Region."
Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Modern Jewish Experience) Edited by Hasia R. Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger $24.95	Long recognized as the largest and most vibrant immigrant Jewish neighborhood in America, New York City's Lower East Side is the focus of this lively and well illustrated book. From colorful histories of its synagogues, schools, restaurants, shops, and homes, to an account of its emergence in recent years as a cultural hub, Remembering the Lower East Side revisits this most popular site of American Jewish memory and pays tribute to its people and places.
The Tenement Saga: The Lower East Side And Early Jewish American Writers by Sanford Sternlicht $17.95	Folding childhood memories into an academic study, author Sternlicht (Student Companion to Elie Wiesel and Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion) delivers readers to a distant world with which he is still exceedingly comfortable. Sternlicht’s volume is divided into two parts: the first gives a history of the Lower East Side from approximately 1882-1924—the years of a great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to America; the second presents a critical study of 14 early Jewish American writers.--From Publishers Weekly.