This event was originally scheduled for January 2022.

Live and in person at Brookline Booksmith! Celebrate the release of Our Will to Live with Mark Ludwig.

Register for the event!

RSVP to let us know you're coming! RSVPs don't guarantee a seat, but you'll be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates.

Reserve a book!

Books will be available for purchase at the event, but you can ensure that you get a copy by preordering on this page. You can pick your book up after 6:30PM on the day of the event.

Can't make it to the event? Preorder the book here to have it signed, and choose to have it held or shipped from the store!

Our Will to Live: The Terezín Music Critiques of Viktor Ullmann

“Our Will to Live takes readers into the world of Terezín’s silenced artists and makes their voices come alive. A testimony to the inextinguishable strength of the human spirit. There are moments of excruciating beauty, there are heartrending stories, all reminding us that if we lose our humanity, we are nothing.” —Yo-Yo Ma

An in-depth new picture of Terezín's cultural life arrives with Our Will to Live. It brings the first English translation of Ullmann's firsthand accounts of Terezín's concerts, composers, and a generation of accomplished artists silenced too soon—plus a trove of stunning, rarely seen art created by Terezín prisoners, and an original collection of vintage and new music tracks performed by survivors and contemporary masters. The result of 30 years of original research. Created, introduced, and richly annotated by Mark Ludwig, executive director of the Terezín Music Foundation.

Mark Ludwig is a leading expert on music as resistance in times of oppression and genocide and a Fulbright scholar of Terezín. He is a violist emeritus with the BSO and founder/executive director of the Terezín Music Foundation.