Sasha Abramsky – författare

"Never has the world needed strong and wise American leadership more than it does now. Abramsky''s eminently readable description of Obama''s personal gifts makes it clear that he is remarkably suited to be the president the moment requires." -Former New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo From the moment he burst onto the national political scene, Barack Obama has fascinated people more than any politician in decades. Many biographers have already retold his story, but no previous book truly explains how his mind works, what passions drive him, or what makes him such an effective leader. This concise profile explores the ideas, inspirations, and experiences that have shaped the president. It quotes a wide network of sources, including many who broke long-standing vows of silence to offer their candid and surprising observations. Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky interviewed close to one hundred of Obama''s current and former friends, colleagues, classmates, teachers, staff, mentors, basketball buddies, fellow Chicago activists, media consultants, editors, and even his next-door neighbors from Hyde Park. These people each know a part of Obama''s life and career, which the author blends the pieces into a uniquely detailed analysis. Abramsky explains the origins of Obama''s extraordinary poise, focus, and self-confidence; his powerful storytelling and speaking skills; and his empathetic listening style. He shows why Obama''s experiences as a community organizer are widely misunderstood and more influential than many people realize. And he explores how Obama found a unique way to bridge America''s racial divides. No previous book has delved so deeply into the events and people that helped make Barack Obama the man he is today.

Why does a disease that killed only a handful of Americans like ebola provoke panic, but the flu-which kills tens of thousands each year-is dismissed with a yawn? Why is an unarmed young black woman who knocks on a stranger's front door to ask for help after her car breaks down perceived to be so threatening that the stranger shoots her dead? In Jumping at Shadows, Sasha Abramsky sets his sights on America's most dangerous epidemic: irrational fear.In this meditation on the paralyzing terror Americans feel when confronted with something they don't understand-from foreigners to tropical viruses to universal health care-Abramsky delivers an eye-opening analysis of our misconceptions about risk and threats, and how our brains interpret them, both at a neurological level and at a conscious one. What emerges is a journey through a political and cultural landscape that is defined by our fears, which are often misplaced. Ultimately, Abramsky shows that our fears can teach us a great deal about our society, exposing our deeply ingrained racism, classism, xenophobia, and susceptibility to the toxic messages of demagogues.

A gripping narrative of federal workers caught in Trump’s second-term purge, and the devastating consequences for American democracy.American Carnage follows eleven federal workers, in eight government agencies, from the time they were told they were fired in the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidential administration through to the summer of 2025. With Trump having empowered the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and his Department of Government Efficiency, to make dramatic cuts to many of the country’s most important agencies, what unfolded in these months was a cascading tragedy of historic proportions.Their stories, which show a country in a profound moment of crisis and dislocation, are America’s stories. What happened to them—the bullying, the intimidation, the deliberate removal of financial stability—also happened to hundreds of thousands of other employees. A fierce reckoning with the intimate and far-reaching effects of these layoffs, both on the individuals who lost their jobs and on the millions of Americans who found their access to basic government services curtailed, American Carnage is the first book-length account of how these cuts dulled and denuded our city on the hill, leaving a morally impoverished landscape in their wake.

This is the story of Sasha Abramsky's grandparents, Chimen and Miriam Abramsky, and of their unique home at 5 Hillway, around the corner from Hampstead Heath.In their semi-detached house, so deceptively ordinary from the outside, the Abramskys created a remarkable House of Books. It became the repository for Chimen's collection of thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and other printed, handwritten and painted documents, representing his journey through the great political, philosophical, religious and ethical debates that have shaped the western world.Chimen Abramsky was barely a teenager when his father, a famous rabbi, was arrested by Stalin's secret police and sentenced to five years hard labour in Siberia, and fifteen when his family was exiled to London. Lacking a university degree, he nevertheless became a polymath, always obsessed with collecting ideas, with capturing the meanderings of the human soul through the world of great thoughts and thinkers. Rejecting his father's Orthodoxy, he became a Communist, made his living as a book-dealer and amassed a huge, and astonishingly rare, library of socialist literature and memorabilia. Disillusioned with Communism and belatedly recognising the barbarity at the core of Stalin's project, he transformed himself once more, this time into a liberal and a humanist. To his socialist library was added a vast trove of Jewish history volumes. Chimen ended his career as Professor of Hebrew and Jewish studies at UCL, London and rare manuscripts expert for Sotheby's.With his wife Miriam, Chimen made their house a focal point for left-wing intellectual Jewish life: hundreds of the world's leading thinkers, from Isaiah Berlin to Eric Hobsbawm, dined at their table. The House of Twenty Thousand Books brings alive this latter-day salon by telling the story of Chimen Abramsky's love affair with ideas and with the world of books and of Miriam's obsession with being a hostess and with entertaining. Room by room, book by book, idea by idea, the world of these politically engaged intellectuals, autodidacts and dreamers is lovingly resurrected.In this extraordinary elegy to a lost world, Sasha Abramsky's passionate narrative brings to life once more not just the Hillway salon, but the ideas, the conflicts, the personalities and the human yearnings that animated it.

This is the story of Sasha Abramsky''s grandparents, Chimen and Miriam Abramsky, and of their unique home at 5 Hillway, around the corner from Hampstead Heath. In their semi-detached house, so deceptively ordinary from the outside, the Abramskys created a remarkable House of Books. It became the repository for Chimen''s collection of thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and other printed, handwritten and painted documents, representing his journey through the great political, philosophical, religious and ethical debates that have shaped the western world. Chimen Abramsky was barely a teenager when his father, a famous rabbi, was arrested by Stalin''s secret police and sentenced to five years hard labour in Siberia, and fifteen when his family was exiled to London. Lacking a university degree, he nevertheless became a polymath, always obsessed with collecting ideas, with capturing the meanderings of the human soul through the world of great thoughts and thinkers. Rejecting his father''s Orthodoxy, he became a Communist, made his living as a book-dealer and amassed a huge, and astonishingly rare, library of socialist literature and memorabilia. Disillusioned with Communism and belatedly recognising the barbarity at the core of Stalin''s project, he transformed himself once more, this time into a liberal and a humanist. To his socialist library was added a vastrove of Jewish history volumes. Chimen ended his career as Professor of Hebrew and Jewish studies at UCL, London and rare manuscripts expert for Sotheby''s. With his wife Miriam, Chimen made their house a focal point for left-wing intellectual Jewish life: hundreds of the world''s leading thinkers, from at their table. The House of Twenty Thousand Books brings alive this latter-day salon by telling the story of Chimen Abramsky''s love affair with ideas and with the world of books and of Miriam''s obsession with being a hostess and with entertaining. Room by room, book by book, idea by idea, the world of these politically engaged intellectuals, autodidacts and dreamers is lovingly resurrected. In this extraordinary elegy to a lost world, Sasha Abramsky''s passionate narrative brings to life once more not just the Hillway salon, but the ideas, the conflicts, the personalities and the human yearnings that animated it. ''The sheer richness of this marvellous book - in terms of its style, think Borges, Perec - amply complements the wondrous complexity of the family - in terms of its subject-matter, think the Eitingons, the Ephrussi - about which Sasha Abramsky writes so lovingly. And as a portrait of London''s left-wing Jewish intellectual life it is surely without equal.'' Simon Winchester ''I loved this touching and heartfelt celebration of a scholar, teacher and bibliophile, a man whose profound learning was fine-tempered by humane wisdom and self-knowledge. We might all of us envy Sasha Abramsky in possessing such a remarkable grandfather, heroic in his integrity and evoked for us here with real eloquence and affection.'' Jonathan Keates ''Sasha Abramsky has combined four kinds of history - familial, political, Jewish, and literary - into one brilliant and compelling book. With him as an erudite and sensitive guide, any reader will be grateful for the opportunity to be immersed into the house of twenty thousand books.'' Samuel Freedman ''The House of Twenty Thousand Books is a grandson''s elegy for the vanished world of his grandparents'' house in London and the exuberant, passionate jostling of two traditions - Jewish and Marxist - that intertwined in his growing up. It is a fascinating memoir of the fatal encounter between Russian Jewish yearning for freedom and the Stalinist creed, a grandson''s unsparing, but loving reckoning with a conflicted inheritance. In the digital age, it will also make you long for the smell of old books, the dust on shelves and the collector''s passions, all on display in The House of Twenty Thousand Books.'' Michael Ignatieff

Nelson Mandela ist eine der wichtigsten und inspirierendsten Figuren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sein Leben und Wirken hat einen unmessbaren Einfluss auf Generationen von Menschen in der ganzen Welt. In diesem Buch nähern sich über 30 bedeutende Persönlichkeiten unserer Zeit - Politiker, Künstler, Aktivisten, Weggefährten und Kritiker - in eigenen Beiträgen dem Phänomen Nelson Mandela. Auf diese Weise entsteht ein deutlich vielschichtigeres Bild als die herkömmlichen Mandela-Porträts. Neben großer Bewunderung für den Friedensstifter und Versöhner melden sich auch kritische Stimmen zu Wort. Denn der Ikone Mandela steht die Realität der immer noch extrem ungleichen und gewalttätigen Gesellschaft Südafrikas gegenüber. Eine Gesellschaft, in der die Täter von gestern weiterhin in Strandvillen und die Opfer in Slums leben, während sich "Papa Mandela" mit Supermodels und Popstars fotografieren lässt. "Madiba. Das Vermächtnis des Nelson Mandela" schafft eine differenzierte Einordnung eines der bedeutendsten menschlichen und politischen Phänomene unserer Zeit. Mit Beiträgen u.a. von: Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Joachim Gauck, Ko Un, Juliette Binoche, Elia Suleiman, Tariq Ali, John Carlin, Colin Powell, Albie Sachs, Peter Hain, Ariel Dorfman, Nadine Gordimer

Durante décadas, Chimen Abramsky y su esposa, Miriam, organizaron encuentros épicos en su fascinante casa llena de libros, y reunieron a muchos de los grandes intelectuales de la época, de Eric Hobsbawm a Isaiah Berlin. Hijo ateo de uno de los rabinos más importantes del siglo, Chimen nació en 1916 cerca de Minsk y pasó sus primeros años de adolescencia en Moscú; luego emigró a Londres, donde descubrió los escritos de Karl Marx. Asistió brevemente a la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén, hasta que la Segunda Guerra Mundial interrumpió sus estudios. De regreso en Inglaterra, se casó, y durante muchos años él y Miriam se ocuparon de una respetada librería judía en el East End de Londres. Cuando los nazis invadieron Rusia en junio de 1941, Chimen se unió al Partido Comunista, convirtiéndose en una figura destacada del Comité Nacional judío. Fue miembro del mismo hasta 1958, cuando, sorprendentemente, un día por fin reconoció los crímenes cometidos por Stalin.En la madurez, Chimen se reinventó a sí mismo una vez más, en esta ocasión como pensador liberal, humanista, profesor universitario y experto en manuscritos de la casa de subastas Sotheby's. Su nieto, el periodista Sasha Abramsky, recrea en estas fascinantes páginas un mundo perdido, dando vida a la gente, a los libros y a las ideas que llenaban la casa de sus abuelos, combinando cuatro tipos de historia (la familiar, la política, la judía y la literaria) en un magnífico y absorbente texto. De su erudita y delicada mano, cualquier lector estará agradecido de tener la oportunidad de recorrer esta casa."En La casa de los veinte mil libros, de Sasha Abramsky, recrea de modo exhaustivo el ambiente intelectual construido alrededor de los libros antiguos, el pensamiento, la ortodoxia basada en la yeshiva, el hasidismo místico, la Ilustración judía conocida como la Haskalah, los juegos de ajedrez, los dominós rusos, los alimentos de Europa del Este, el té caliente, la familia y las largas noches alimentado el espíritu y promoviendo el debate político."Luis M. Alonso, La Nueva España