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Shop nowThe Art of Inventing Hope
Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel
Narrator
James Anderson Foster
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Length
5 hours 55 minutes
Language
English
The Art of Inventing Hope offers an unprecedented, in-depth conversation between the world’s most revered Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, and a son of survivors, Howard Reich. During the last four years of Wiesel’s life, he met frequently with Reich in New York, Chicago, and Florida—and spoke often on the phone—to discuss the subject that linked them: both Wiesel and Reich’s father, Robert Reich, were liberated from Buchenwald death camp on April 11, 1945. What had started as an interview assignment from the Chicago Tribune quickly evolved into a friendship and a partnership. Reich and Wiesel believed their colloquy represented a unique exchange between two generations deeply affected by a cataclysmic event. Wiesel said to Reich, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Here Wiesel—at the end of his life—looks back on his ideas and writings on the Holocaust, synthesizing them in his conversations with Reich. The insights that Wiesel offered and Reich illuminates can help the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors understand their painful inheritance, while inviting everyone else to partake of Wiesel’s wisdom on life, ethics, and morality.
Howard Reich has written for the Chicago Tribune since 1978 and joined the staff in 1983. He is the author of five other books, including Prisoner of Her Past: A Son’s Memoir. Reich has won an Emmy Award, and the Chicago Journalists Association named him Chicago Journalist of the Year in 2011.
James Anderson Foster is an audiobook narrator who has been nominated for three Voice Arts Awards for best audiobook narration in the categories of science-fiction, fantasy, and mystery. He has been praised for his conversational delivery and ability to sound exactly like the voice you were imagining in your head. Born and raised on the west coast, he has lived in the Midwest for over a decade but still considers Oregon home.
Reviews
“The Art of Inventing Hope can help us remember, learn from, and perhaps argue with the world’s most revered Holocaust survivor and enlist him in living our lives.”
“Wiesel’s words through The Art of Inventing Hope might be viewed as coming from the grave. But as Reich presented him, he is living and breathing and just as relevant now as when he spoke them into Reich’s tape recorder.”
“James Foster’s narration of this audiobook is a good match of text and voice…Foster narrates with restrained passion that evokes the tone of the author. His pacing is a bit quick at times but always easy to understand. His enunciation is clear, and his overall performance makes a deep impression on the listener.”
“[A] brief but moving work…Reich does an admirable job of complementing his subject’s sage words with his own perspective without in any way detracting or distracting from it—no easy task yet one the author accomplishes with aplomb.”
“Howard Reich utilizes his considerable journalistic talents and unique perspective as a second-generation Holocaust survivor to elicit powerful insights from Elie Wiesel. This book will play an important role in making the Holocaust relevant to future generations.”
“In his struggle to understand his parents’ unimaginable and unspoken past, Howard Reich finds answers in these powerful conversations with Elie Wiesel…Reich’s own poignant narrative is as compelling as the advice Wiesel offers, and in the end it is so satisfying to see how these two brilliant minds find solace through words and through love.”
“How does one survive the horrors of the Holocaust? Wiesel helps Reich to discover that in shared memory there is hope.”
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