The narrative follows Zeb, Kiara, and Leo, three individuals navigating the complexities of learning disabilities and mental health challenges in America. Each has endured personal hardships but refuses to be defined by them. As they transition from isolated youths to resilient adults, they confront ongoing difficulties while striving to impact a society that frequently neglects those who learn differently. Their journey highlights themes of perseverance, self-acceptance, and the importance of advocating for oneself and others.
The book emphasizes the importance of individual action in addressing global issues, asserting that while one person may seem insignificant, each can contribute to meaningful change. It encourages readers to adopt sustainable practices, such as reducing car use and modifying dietary habits, while also advocating for activism against corporate pollution and misinformation. By promoting proactive measures over passivity and despair, the work inspires a sense of responsibility and empowerment in confronting pressing environmental and social challenges.
"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
"Spanning nearly a century, from the years preceding the Holocaust to the defeat of the Nazis and subsequent triumph of Communism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the present day, Jonathan Kaufman tells the stories of five families. A Hole in the Heart of the World is both a descent into the still-dark soul of Eastern Europe and a shockingly optimistic chronicle of a fragile cultural and religious birth. In Berlin a prominent Jewish family clings to its Communist ideals even after the end of the Cold War. A West German cantor - and concentration camp survivor - crosses the Berlin Wall to minister to the Jewish remnant in East Berlin. In Hungary a rabbi turns dissident when Communist-controlled Jewish leaders dismiss him, but he continues to teach Hebrew class in his living room, waging an underground war to preserve and nurture Jewish life. Young citizens of Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest find a renewed faith and pride as they uncover a secret heritage buried in the rubble of war and long condemned by the Communist regime. A Polish Catholic woman bears silent witness to the sufferings of her Jewish neighbors during World War II and later discovers something that overturns everything she ever believed about her past." "From the old to the young and the disenchanted to the enthusiastic, each arrives, finally, at a place of cultural and religious renewal. A Hole in the Heart of the World is a luminous portrait of the Jewish life that persists, though transformed and tenuous, as a vital element of the European community."--Jacket
