Shortly after his mother dies of breast cancer when he is ten years old, Michael Blumenthal discovers that she was not his biological mother, and that his aunt and uncle, immigrant chicken farmers living in Vineland, New Jersey, are really his parents. As fate would have it, his adoptive father, a German-Jewish refugee raised by a loveless and embittered stepmother after his own mother died in childbirth, has inflicted on his stepson a fate uncannily - and terrifyingly - similar to his own: Having first adopted Michael, in part, to help his dying wife, he then imposes on him the same sort of penurious and loveless stepmother whom he himself had had to survive. With these revelations, the ""mysteries"" that seem to have permeated Michael's childhood are laid bare, triggering a quest for belonging that will infiltrate the author's entire adult life.

What's wrong with the contemporary American medical system? What does it mean when a state's democratic presidential primary casts 40% of its votes for a felon incarcerated in another state? What's so bad about teaching by PowerPoint? What is "truly" the dirtiest word in America?

These are just a few of the engaging and controversial issues that Michael Blumenthal, poet, novelist, essayist, and law professor, tackles in this collection of poignant essays commissioned by West Virginia Public Radio.

In these brief essays, Blumenthal provides unconventional insights into our contemporary political, educational, and social systems, challenging us to look beyond the headlines to the psychological and sociological realities that underlie our conventional thinking.

As a widely published poet and novelist, Blumenthal brings along a lawyer's analytical ability with his literary sensibility, effortlessly facilitating a distinction between the cliches of today's pallid political discourse and the deeper realities that lie beneath. This collection will captivate and provoke those with an interest in literature, politics, law, and the unwritten rules of our social and political engagements.

"The finest collection of poetry I've read in a very long time."
--Ron HansenFrom my birth mother
I took my melancholy disposition
and from my father
the ability to get through life
with a bullet in one arm.
--from "Genetics"
"

"No Hurry" is a book of poems for the aging in body but youthful in spirit, for those interested in continuing to ask most meaningful questions as they head "downhill" What does it mean to be alive? What shall we make of this journey from birth to death? How can we find meaning and joy amid our mortality and suffering?

Fiction. Jewish Studies. This Michael Blumenthal novel was chosen by Elie Wiesel, Thomas Kenneally, and Merrill Joan Gerber as winner of Hadassah Magazine's prestigious Ribelow Prize as Best Jewish Novel of the Year in 1994. In its all-too-short lifespan, it received rave reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly and glowing tributes from such writers as Lorrie Moore, Tim O'Brien, Jhumpa Lahiri, Robert Coles, and Leslie Epstein. Unfortunately, just three months after the novel's publication, its publisher, Zoland Books, was forced to close for economic reasons, and this brilliant novel by one of America's finest poets hardly even saw the light of day. It is now available for the first time in paperback allowing it a second--really a first--life. Once you read it, I am sure you will agree that it more than deserves the kind of critical and popular attention which--due to the unfortunate circumstances that befell its original publisher--it never received.

The Invisible Wall is one mans quest to understand the failure of the German-Jewish relationship and to explain the character and attitudes of Germanys assimilated Jews over a three hundred-year period.. The Invisible Wall is one mans quest to understand the failure of the German-Jewish relationship and to explain the character and attitudes of Germanys assimilated Jews over a 300-year period. Juxtaposing the broad picture of history and politics in Germany against the stories of six of his own ancestors, W. Michael Blumenthal explores the triumphs and tragedies of Jews of successive generations, seeking the sources and outcomes of the prejudices that separated them from other Germans. Juxtaposing the broad picture of an evolving Germany against the stories of six of his own ancestors, W. Michael Blumenthal seeks to show how the unrequited love affair of Germanys Jews with their native country contributed to the horrors of the Holocaust. Born in Germany in 1926, Blumenthal escaped the Nazis as a teenager with his family in 1939 and grew up with other Jewish refugees in a Shanghai ghetto. When he arrived in the United States in 1947, he had only sixty-five dollars in his pocket. From these modest beginnings, he went on to a remarkable professional life in business, government service, and education. Yet questions about his past haunted him, and as the years went by, they occupied his mind with greater urgency.Turning to his family tree for answers, Blumenthal spent the better part of a decade learning the history of his people. He found rich stories in the lives of six Blumenthal ancestors--all of whom happened to be major figures in German-Jewish history. *Jost Liebmann, an itinerant peddler of trinkets and cheap jewels who became court jeweler to the Brandenburg nobility; *Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, whose Berlin salon w as the meeting place of Prussias intellectual elite; *Giacomo Meyerbeer, a celebrated composer of grand opera who dealt with antisemitism by ceaselessly striving for success; *Louis Blumenthal, a respected businessman and founder of his towns bank; *Arthur Eloesser, a scholar and literary critic in the heyday of Weimar; *Ewald Blumenthal, the authors father. Once a decorated soldier in the Kaisers elite guards, he was later a prisoner at Buchenwald.. By recounting the stories of these remarkable individuals within the historical context of three centuries, Blumenthal presents a sweeping portrait of German Jews from the birth of Christianity to the eve of the Holocaust, revealing how Jews of various generations tried but failed to pierce the prejudice that separated them from other Germans. A work of tremendous scope and vision, The Invisible Wall presents a fascinating perspective on one of the most difficult questions of our time.