title: Joel Carmichael
text: # Joel Carmichael
  
  Joel Carmichael (December 31, 1915 – January 27, 2006) was an American historian, magazine editor, and translator.
  
  ## Biography
  
  ### Early life and education
  
  Born Joel Lipsky on December 31, 1915, in New York City, Carmichael was the youngest son of Charlotte Schacht and Louis Lipsky, a founder of the American Zionist movement, President of the Zionist Organization of America. His oldest brother, David (1907–1996) became a publicist; his middle brother, Eleazar (1911–1993), was a lawyer, novelist, journalist, playwright and active Zionist.
  
  Following graduation from high school, he was sent for a year to Palestine. There he began learning Arabic before returning to New York and attending Columbia University. 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. 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 family
  
  Carmichael was married twice: first to the journalist Mary Carr Thomas, then to sculptor Elizabeth de Cuevas in 1960. He had three children.
  
  His granddaughter is the filmmaker Emily Carmichael.
  
  ### Death
  
  Carmichael died January 27, 2006, in Manhattan.
  
  ## 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 (Macmillan, 1963)
  * A Short History of the Russian Revolution (Nelson, 1964)
  * The Shaping of the Arabs: A Study in Ethnic Identity (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, History of the Islamic Peoples (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939)
  * N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record (Oxford, 1955)
  * Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Bantam, 1960)
  * Dan Theodore, The Origins of Bolshevism (Secker & Warburg, 1964)
  * Gisela Elsner, The Giant Dwarfs (Grove Press, 1965)
  * Paul Marc Henry, Africa Aeterna: The Pictorial Chronicle of a Continent (Sedo S.A., 1965)
  * Jean Lacouture, Vietnam: Between Two Truces, trans. w. Kellen Konrad (Vintage Books/Random House, 1966)
  * Willy Brandt, A Peace Policy for Europe (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968)
  