Life in a Jar

Name: Life in a Jar
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Jack Mayer
ISBN: 9781494587932

Author: Jack Mayer

Narrator: Patrick Lawlor

Unabridged: 14 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/06/2015

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, History, European History

Synopsis

During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for sixty years.

Unknown, that is, until three high school girls from an economically depressed, rural school district in southeast Kansas stumbled upon a tantalizing reference to Sendler's rescues, which they fashioned into a history project, a play they called Life in a Jar. Their innocent drama was first seen in Kansas, then the Midwest, then New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and finally Poland, where they elevated Irena Sendler to a national hero, championing her legacy of tolerance and respect for all people.

Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a Holocaust history and more. It is the inspirational story of Protestant students from Kansas, each called in her own complex way to the history of a Catholic woman who knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children."

About Jack Mayer

Jack Mayer is a pediatrician and a writer. He began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, a small town in eastern Franklin County on the Canadian border. His was the first pediatric practice in that half of the county. He was a country doctor there for ten years, often bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. From 1987 to 1991 Dr. Mayer was a National Cancer Institute Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching the molecular biology of childhood cancer. Most of his scientific writing was done during those four years. He was also an academic pediatrician at Columbia University's Presbyterian Medical Center.
Dr. Mayer returned to Vermont in 1991 and established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, Vermont, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an instructor in pediatrics at the University of Vermont School of Medicine and an adviser for premedical students at Middlebury College.

Throughout his career, Dr. Mayer has written short stories, poems, and essays about his years in pediatric practice and hiking The Long Trail in Vermont. He was a participant at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2003 and 2005 for fiction, and in 2008 for poetry. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on July 10, 2018

It's always a beautiful thing to behold when a teacher inspires his or her students to overcome crippling obstacles and exalt in academic discovery and what perhaps I loved most about this extremely moving book was this theme. We never quite know who we are until we're inspired and if we're lucky en......more

Goodreads review by John on January 01, 2013

I don't begin to understand why this book isn't a widely-read best seller. It should be! If I had to pick only one book to illustrate the best and worst of humanity, this would be it. The Holocaust holds an immensely painful lesson, but one that humanity can ill-afford not to re-teach. This book bala......more

Goodreads review by Kate on January 05, 2012

This was a very good read. I canot give it 5 stars as there (in my humble opinion) was too much about the 3 teens that brought this story to light where my interest lay in Irena Sendler and her story itself. I also found the teens portion "preachy" which automatically deducts a star for me. However -......more

Goodreads review by emma grace on March 09, 2012

This was an amazing story, written in a really, really dull way. This book was over 350 pages, and unfortunately, it probably could have been cut down by half and you still would have gotten the story. That is alot of fluff. It was really too bad, because, as I said before, the whole Life in a Jar/I......more

Goodreads review by Elin on September 29, 2012

This is a fantastic book. It tells the story of a Catholic social worker (Irena Sendler) who smuggled 2500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto. She was a minor footnote in Holocaust history until three teens from a small town in Kansas decided to write a play about her for a history day project......more