Early life and education

Joseph Lipsky was born December 31, 1915 in New York. He was the youngest son of Charlotte Schacht and Louis Lipsky, a founder of the American Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 movement. His oldest brother, David (1907–1996) became a publicist; his middle brother, Eleazar

Eleazar Lipsky

Eleazar Lipsky was a prosecutor, lawyer, novelist and playwright born in the Bronx, New York, USA. He wrote the novels that formed the basis of two very successful films, Kiss of Death and The People Against O'Hara...

 (1911–1993), was a lawyer, novelist, journalist, playwright and active Zionist.

Following graduation from high school, he was sent for a year to Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. There he began learning Arabic before returning to New York and attending Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. In England, a chance meeting with an Oxford don turned him to read Greek and Russian at Oxford.

Career

His first book, a translation of a memoir of the Russian Revolution, helped Carmichael land a contract with Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

. From there, he wrote numerous titles on early Christianity, Arab history and Russian history, and translated Anna Karenina for a new paperback edition. One book, The Death of Jesus, was translated into eight languages. Carmichael was also editor of Midstream, a Zionist magazine, for 24 years, serving from 1975–1988 and 1990-2001.

Marriage and children

Carmichael was married twice: first to the journalist Mary Carr Thomas, then to sculptor Elizabeth de Cuevas in 1960. He had three children.

Published works

• An Illustrated History of Russia (Reynal, 1960)
• The Eichmann Case; reactions in West Germany (Marstin Press, 1961)
• Chaim Weizmann: a Biography By Several Hands with Meyer Wolfe Weisgal and David Ben-Gurion (1962)
• The Death of Jesus
  Death of Jesus (book)
  The Death Of Jesus is a textual analysis of the New Testament, with the premise that any material that corroborates Christian doctrine is probably propaganda edited in after the fact to some grains of truth about an historical personage...
  
  (Macmillan, 1963)
• A Short History of the Russian Revolution (Nelson, 1964)
• The Shaping of the Arabs: A Study in Ethnic Identity
  The Shaping of the Arabs
  The Shaping of the Arabs: A Study in Ethnic Identity is a book by noted scholar of Russian history and Islamic scholar Joel Carmichael. It was published in 1967 by Macmillan ....
  
  (Macmillan, 1967)
• Karl Marx: the Passionate Logician (Scribner, 1967)
• Open Letter to Moses and Mohammed (J.H. Heineman, 1968)
• A Cultural History of Russia (Weybright and Talley, 1968)
• Trotsky: an Appreciation of His Life (St. Martin's Press, 1975)
• Stalin's Masterpiece (St. Martin's Press, 1976)
• Arabs Today (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977)
• The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth (Hippocrene Books, 1989)
• A History of Russia (Hippocrene Books, 1990)
• The Satanizing of the Jews: Origin and Development of Mystical Anti-Semitism (Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1992)
• The Unriddling of Christian Origins: a Secular Account (Prometheus Books, 1995)

Translations

• Carl Brockelmann
  Carl Brockelmann
  Carl Brockelmann , German Semiticist, was the foremost orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, Königsberg...
  
  , History of the Islamic Peoples (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939)
• N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record (Oxford, 1955)
• Leo Tolstoy
  Leo Tolstoy
  Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
  
  , Anna Karenina
  Anna Karenina
  Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
  
  (Bantam, 1960)
• Dan Theodore, The Origins of Bolshevism (Secker & Warburg, 1964)
• Gisela Elsner
  Gisela Elsner
  Gisela Elsner was a German writer. She won the Prix Formentor in 1964 for her novel Die Riesenzwerge .-Life:...
  
  , The Giant Dwarfs (Grove Press, 1965)
• Paul Marc Henry, Africa Aeterna: The Pictorial Chronicle of a Continent (Sedo S.A., 1965)
• Jean Lacouture
  Jean Lacouture
  Jean Lacouture is a journalist, historian and author. He is particularly famous for his biographies. - Biography :...
  
  , Vietnam: Between Two Truces, trans. w. Kellen Konrad (Vintage Books/Random House, 1966)
• Willy Brandt
  Willy Brandt
  Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
  
  , A Peace Policy for Europe (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968)

External links

• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0138438/
• http://www.nybooks.com/authors/1261