The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

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Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is back for its 25th season. Join us at the Fitzgerald Theater for four special events with renowned authors, celebrating our anniversary with a special $25 ticket price for MPR members and Star Tribune subscribers. Buy tickets here.

The spring of 1933 brought the first of many insidious measures levied against the Jews of Germany, long before the so-called "Final Solution." The systematic institutionalization of anti-Semitism included the boycott of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of property, the prohibition of marriages between Jews and Aryans and, from the earliest days, the expulsion of Jewish musicians, actors and artists from the nation's orchestras, opera companies and theaters. The little-known story of Jüdische Kulturbund is brought to light in "The Inextinguishable Symphony" (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) by Martin Goldsmith, for years a respected music host and commentator on National Public Radio.
An amiable, modest public figure or a morbidly sensitive, possibly suicidal, neurotic? Such are the conflicting images of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, whose birthday we celebrate this month. Though the popularity of his music is undisputed, the picture of Tchaikovsky the man has been anything but. Alexander Poznansky, a Russian music scholar at Yale, has taken a fresh look at this complex personality in "Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes" (University of Indiana Press, 1999) - a fascinating account of his life and career collected from the diaries of people closest to him.