Annette Libeskind Berkovits thought her attempt to have her father record his life's story failed. But in 2004, three years after her father's death, she was going through his things and found a box of tapesaseveral years' worthawith his spectacular life, triumphs, and tragedies told one last time in his baritone voice. Nachman Libeskind's remarkable story is an odyssey through crucial events of the twentieth century. With an unshakable will and a few drops of luck, he survives a pre-war Polish prison; witnesses the 1939 Nazi invasion of Lodz and narrowly escapes; is imprisoned in a brutal Soviet gulag where he helps his fellow inmates survive, and upon regaining his freedom treks to the foothills of the Himalayas, where he finds and nearly loses the love of his life. Later, the crushing communist regime and a lingering postwar anti-Semitism in Poland drive Nachman and his young family to Israel, where he faces a new form of discrimination. Then, defiantly, Nachman turns a pocketful of change into a new life in New York City, where a heartbreaking promise leads to his unlikely success as a modernist painter that inspires others to pursue their dreams. With just a box of tapes, Annette Libeskind Berkovits tells more than her father's story: she builds an uncommon family saga and reimagines a turbulent past. In the process she uncovers a stubborn optimism that flourished in the unlikeliest of places.

In twenty-four hours, Daniel Libeskind and the Alte Oper Frankfurt staged seventy-five concerts across Frankfurt as part of an exciting music project, "One Day in Life." But to understand "One Day in Life," you have to think beyond the average symphony center or opera house, with rows upon rows of red-backed seats and acoustic ceiling panels. The idea behind "One Day" was to make all of Frankfurt echo with the sound of music, from Indian raga in an operating room to Mozart's Requiem in a subway station and Handel's Water Music at a municipal swimming pool. One Day in Life is the beautifully produced accompanying volume, featuring powerful photographs, short writings, and a complete listing of locations and performances, which included prestigious artists and ensembles like pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, violinist Carolin Widmann, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and locations like the German National Library's underground stacks, the former great kitchen of the Roemer, and the thirty-eighth floor of the Opera Tower. To add a physical dimension to the project, Libeskind collaborated with the Spanish surface specialist Cosentino on "Musical Labyrinth," an installation in Frankfurt's Opera Square, which reproduced the original concept sketch showing the locations of the venues where concerts were to be held. A must-have for all interested in music and architecture, One Day in Life brings together everything you could want to know about this unusual project.