In this engaging memoir, Robert Rand tells the tale of how through dancing he helped free himself from the grip of panic disorder. Rand was a serious, shy, and intense scholar who had achieved national recognition in a career in writing and radio production. In the midst of his success, panic attacks overwhelmed him. For more than two years, he suffered their debilitating effects; the disease flattened his spirits and stripped him of self-confidence. Then he discovered social dancing, and in particular Cajun and zydeco dance and music. Dancing became a cathartic and liberating endeavor, helping him beat back his panic disorder to discover a world of passion and romance and to gain control of his life.

This book provides a compelling inside view of the Soviet justice system in the Gorbachev era, from the perspective of the practicing lawyer, advokat, who advises citizens in the USSR of their legal rights and defends their interests in courts.

Soviet leaders and commentators now are placing great emphasis on the need to create a socialist "law-based stateaEURO in the USSR in order to free people from the repressive legacy of Stalinism and enable them to contribute more fully to rebuilding their economy and society. But to what extent is the public discussion bringing about actual change in

Examines Japan’s war generation—Japanese men and women who survived World War Two and rebuilt their lives, into the 21st century, from memories of that conflict Since John Hersey’s Hiroshima—the classic account, published in 1946, of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of that city—very few books have examined the meaning and impact of World War II through the eyes of Japanese men and women who survived that conflict. Tattered Kimonos in Japan does just that: It is an intimate journey into contemporary Japan from the perspective of the generation of Japanese soldiers and civilians who survived World War II, by a writer whose American father and Japanese father-in-law fought on opposite sides of the conflict. The author, a former NPR senior editor, is Jewish, and he approaches the subject with the sensibilities of having grown up in a community of Holocaust survivors. Mindful of the power of victimhood, memory, and shared suffering, he travels across Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meeting a compelling group of men and women whose lives, even now, are defined by the trauma of war, and by lingering questions of responsibility and repentance for Japan’s wartime aggression. The image of a tattered kimono from Hiroshima is the thread that drives the narrative arc of this emotional story about a writer’s encounter with history, inside the Japan of his father’s generation, on the other side of his father’s war. This is a book about history with elements of family memoir. It offers a fresh and truly unique perspective for readers interested in World War II, Japan, or Judaica; readers seeking cross-cultural journeys; and readers intrigued by Japanese culture, particularly the kimono.