As a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, Aaron Lanskey set out to save the world's abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Today, twenty-five years and one and a half million books later, he has accomplished what has been called "the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history." In "Outwitting History," Lansky shares his adventures as well as the poignant and often laugh-out-loud stories he heard as he traveled the country collecting books. Introducing us to a dazzling array of writers, he shows us how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future--and how the written word can unite everyone who believes in the power of great literature.