Author and Editor
Author
Early in my career I became an author, co-authoring with Isaac Asimov Robots: Machines in Man’s Image (Harmony Books, 1985), which was translated into German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Spanish. The United States Information Agency selected is as one of 1,000 books to represent the diversity of American culture in a traveling book exhibit that toured the Soviet Union in 1987. Beginning at the Moscow Book Fair, the exhibit was called “Many Booked America: the People, Politics, and Government of the United States.”
A few years ago I wrote three physics books for fourth graders: Looking at Light, Listening to Sound, and Sound and Light Technology published by the Benchmark Education Company in 2006.
Memoir Editor
I moved outside of realm of the science writing when I was asked to edit two memoirs: one a Holocaust survivor's tale, the other about a young woman in post-war Europe. Conspicuously Invisible: Wartime Memories of a Jewish Boy from Wilno, is by William Begell. Famous for its Jewish population in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wilno was known as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," became part of Poland in the 1920s, was occupied by the Russians, Lithuanians, and Germans during World War II, and is now Vilnius in Lithuania. The 80,400-word book details Begell's pre-war boyhood among his 14 family members, his cunning as a young boy and pranks he pulled with friends. He traces the hardships during the Russian and German occupations and life in the Jewish ghetto. His cleverness developed in order to survive and eventually he eluded the Nazis by escaping from a labor camp. He is the sole survivor of his family. The memoir was published posthumously by Begell House.
The Longed-For Hour, by Miriam Rosin, takes its name from a song Jewish partisans sang. The author, a Jewish woman from South Africa, left her country to care for Jewish children in a Displaced Persons Camp after World War II. Located in Bavaria, the camp was known as the Children's Center at Kloster Indersdorf. Peviously, it had been a boarding school for German girls. When the author arrived at the Children's Center there were about 322 children, adolescents, and young adults. The task of the staff was to try to match and reunite the displaced with their parents. The Center was run by UNRA and JOINT employess. The experience spawned Ms. Rosin's desire to live in Palestine and fight for the founding of the Jewish State. In her 60,400-word memoir, Rosin documents the struggle between her and the man she loved, who wanted to marry her and remain in South Africa. She was forced to choose between her political ideals and having a safe, secure life and children.