Vaclav Havel – dissident, human rights activist, essayist, philosopher, politician, founder, and president of the Czech Republic – is known throughout the world as a hero of the human rights movement and martyr for the “right to write” (he was imprisoned many times under communism in his country). But few of us in the West know that he is also his country’s most famous dramatist. In fact, his presidency has eclipsed his playwriting. This book tells the dramatic story of his life in the theater during three dark decades under communism, and the extreme risks that he and many others took to put on his plays. The book also discusses his ten full-length plays and eight one-acts – plays that not only tell the story of his country but also helped to change it. For those of us who work in the theater, his story is a powerful and moving one about what it means to be a playwright, a story wherein writing for the theater is an act of courage.

Acts of Courage: Vaclav Havel's Life in the Theater

Biographies & Memoirs

Carol Rocamora

Arts & Literature

Smith & Kraus Global

It is 1938. Berta Weissberger, twelve years old, lives in Hindenburg, Germany, with her mother and older sister. Her father has already left for America, and the family is awaiting the arrival of their American visas. 
These hopes and plans are destroyed at the end of October 1938, however, when Jews are rounded up, loaded onto trucks, and driven to the Polish border. They are forced to cross a river into Poland and ordered, "Keep walking and do not turn back. Anyone attempting to turn back will be shot." 
So begins Bertel's six-year terrifying odyssey in Nazi-occupied Poland. While living a life of constant vigilance and fear, Bertel grows into womanhood. Again and again, Providence steps in and saves her, guiding her to the right person or place. 
It is Betty Lauer's abiding faith in a higher power that enabled her to survive while hiding in plain sight, during the dark night of Nazi Germany, and to tell this remarkable story of great evil and of the nobility of the few who dared to defy the evildoers. An extraordinary story of strength, resilience, hope, and salvation.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Lauer, Betty

Historical

A passionate and well-documented wake up call to all defenders of liberal democracy as it is practiced in Israel and the United States. Ms. Nirenstein lives in Rome and in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem and is a reporter and columnist for the daily newspaper La Stampa in Turin. She is a personal day-to-day witness to the war called Intifada 2.

Terror: The New Anti-Semitism and the War Against the West

History

Nirenstein, Fiamma

Anne Milano Appel

Middle East

The Oslo Syndrome examines the Oslo debacle in which Israel sought to win peace through territorial and other concessions even as Palestinian leaders assured their people their objective was still Israel’s destruction. Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin relates Oslo to the long history of Jews under siege, subjected to defamation, discrimination and other abuses, seeking to end the assaults through self-blame and accommodation to their oppressors.

The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions Of A People Under Siege

Kenneth Levin

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Books by Smith & Kraus Global