AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Marisa Scheinfeld was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1980 and raised in the Catskills. She received a B.A. from the State University at Albany in 2002, and a MFA from San Diego State University in 2011. Her work is highly motivated by her interesting the ruin, or site, and the histories embedded within them. She is a frequent guest lecturer and her photographs have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and in the UK. Marisa's work is among the collections of The Center for Jewish History, The National Yiddish Book Center, The Simon Wiesenthal Center and The Edmund and Nancy K. Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts. Her work has appeared publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Slate Magazine, The Jewish Daily Forward, and American Photography. This book marks her first publication.

For additional information about Marisa visit her website: www.marisascheinfeld.com

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES:

Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is a historian of daily life, especially that of America's Jews. The author of The Wonders of America and A Perfect Fit as well as a forthcoming book on America's relationship to the Ten Commandments, she also writes for The Forward, where her monthly column is now in its 16th consecutive year of publication.

Stefan Kanfer is a contributing editor of City Journal. He writes extensively on a wide range of political, social and cultural topics. Kanfer's most recent City Journal feature, "City Lights," discussed the long line of literary personalities who made New York City their home, ranging from Washington Irving to Edith Warton to Norman Mailer. Kanfer is the author of more than a dozen books, among them cultural histories (The Last Empire, the story of the De Beers diamond company), Stardust Lost, about the triumph and tragedy of the Yiddish Theater in America, and A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills, from the Days of the Ghetto to the Rise and Decline of the Borscht Belt. Kanfer wrote and edited at Time for more than 20 years, during which he was a cinema and theater reviewer and essayist, and for a decade, senior editor of the magazine's book review section. Kanfer was installed as Literary Lion at the New York Public Library, has been a writer-in-residence at CUNY, a visiting professor at SUNY Purchase and Wesleyan University, and was the only Time writer to win the Penney-Missouri School of Journalism and the Westchester Writers Prize.