Irwin M. Berent is a historian, genealogist, writer, archivist, and lecturer who has written more than ten books on subjects as diverse as Jewish genealogy, Chicago Jewish history, Virginia Jewish history, Civil War ironclad USS Monitor crewmen, social interaction, word origins, drug policy, economic conservatism, and Christian fundamentalism. His primary current subject of Jewish interest on which he speaks is about his research on Jacob Abrahams. (He also speaks extensively on drug policy.)
From 1986 to 1990, Mr. Berent compiled a detailed, ground-breaking 12-part series of articles covering the 20th-century history of the Jewish community of Norfolk, of which his book published by JewishHistoryUSA (Norfolk, Virginia: A Jewish History of the 20th Century) is a much-expanded version. He has also written on and researched extensively the history of the shtetl-like, orthodox community of Berkley, Virginia, now a suburb of Norfolk (it was for his research on this topic that he received the American Jewish Historical Society's first annual Local History Essay Prize in 1980).
Mr. Berent co-compiled with David Zubatsky Jewish Genealogy: A Sourcebook of Family Trees and Histories (Avotaynu, 1990), a classic Jewish genealogy reference work. For several years in the 1980s he was the genealogy columnist for the National Jewish Post and Opinion. He is also the founder of the first Jewish genealogy club outside of New York — the Jewish Genealogical Club of Tidewater, founded 1978. His research on his own family — whose roots include the Caplans, Glassers, and Shermans of Ligum and Pakroy, Lithuania; the Resniks and Rutenbergs of Papile, Lithuania; the Karps and Goldsteins of Bausk, Latvia, and the Berents and Shapiros of Chorzelle, Poland — is also extensive.
Mr. Berent also conducted for the Chicago Jewish Archives a published survey of the Jewish communal records of West Rogers Park, the last major Jewish section of Chicago.
In addition, he is an internationally published wordsmith who has co-authored with Dr. Rod Evans several books, including Getting Your Words' Worth (Warner Books, 1993), Weird Words (Berkley Publishing Group, 1995), More Weird Words (Berkley, 1995), and A Dictionary of Highly Unusual Words (Berkley, 1997), as well as an interpersonal communications book (The Right Words, Warner Books, 1992) and The ABC Of Cat Trivia (with Introduction by Betty White; St. Martin's Press, 1996). He has also co-written with Dr. Evans scholarly works including Fundamentalism: An Analysis of Biblical Inerrancy (Introduction by Isaac Asimov, foreword by Steve Allen, Open Court Publishing, 1988), Drug Legalization: For and Against (with Introduction by Hugh Downs, foreword by Linus Pauling, Open Court, 1992), and The Quotable Conservative (Introduction by William F. Buckley; Adams Publishing Co., 1996).
He has also served as archivist of the Monitor Research and Recovery Foundation, coordinated the 125th battle anniversary reunion of the descendants of the Monitor and Virginia (Merrimack) crews, and compiled The Crewmen of the USS Monitor: A Biographical Directory (N.O.A.A., N.C. Div. of Archives and History, 1985). His Monitor/Merrimack crew collection is housed at the Mariner's Museum Archives in Newport News.
Listed in both the 2000 and 2001 editions of Who's Who In America as well as Who's Who in the South and Southwest (1999), Mr. Berent holds a Master's degree in American History (his thesis covered the history of North Carolina's capitol square monuments and statues), and he speaks on a wide variety of social issues including fundamentalism, drug policy, and media violence. He is also co-creator (with John Jarvis) of StoryCraft Software, a major fiction-writing program, and he is the marketing director (and web designer) for StoryCraft Corp., the company that sells the software. And in his spare time, he collects letterheads and billheads of 19th-century Norfolk businesses.
The Right Words: The 350 Best Things to Say to Get Along With people