Richard Michelson is the author of the poetry collections Battles & Lullabies and Tap Dancing for Relatives. His many children’s books have been named among the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and the New Yorker, and among the 12 Best Books of the Decade by Amazon.com. His most recent collection of poetry More Money Than God (University of Pittsburgh Press) explores the boundaries between the personal and the political, and the connections between history and memory. Growing up under the shadow of the Holocaust, in a Brooklyn neighborhood consumed with racial strife, Michelson’s experiences were far from ordinary, yet they remain too much a part of the greater circle of poverty and violence to be dismissed as merely private concerns, safely past. It is Michelson’s sense of humor and acute awareness of Jewish history, with its ancient emphasis on the fundamental worth of human existence that makes this accessible book, finally, celebratory and life-affirming.
