Nature's Gift

About the Book

Nature bestows exceptional althletic abilities to very few. Babe Ruth, Jessie Owens and Tiger Woods come to mind. Mark Fein is such an individual and the story traces his rise to fame and fortune. Endowed with freakish strength that was a trait that some members of his family possessed, Mark also was gifted with exceptional eyesight, speed and coordination which led to his success in the decathlon and later to baseball.

The story is a saga spanning three generations of his family from the Warsaw and Vilnius ghettos to the United States. Born on a farm to Jewish parents, the children of Holocaust survivors, Mark comes to maturity encountering both racism and anti-Semitism. His athleticism naturally leads him to gravitate to sports.

The tale encompasses adventures from Europe, the United States and Israel. Mark encounters love in its myriad forms, degrees and shades from pure sex to the Western ideal. Being a celebrity has its perks and problems and Mark experiences many of them including numerous women and being the target of terrorism and unrelenting paparzzi.

About the Author

Professor Jonathan Kuhn is a fifth generation San Franciscan. He is a scientist that has lived in Israel for many years. Much of his life has been spent in the academic world where he has been a faculty member at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology before retiring. He has a PhD from the University of California at Davis in genetics and his post doctoral studies were at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Kuhn has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Princeton University, the University of Siena, and University of Bologna in Italy. Most of his research has centered on the molecular genetics of microorganisms and their viruses. He was involved in the founding of four biotechnology companies in the area of applied genetic engineering, three of which he was the CEO. During his career he has published about 50 scientific works and been granted several patents. Professor Kuhn presently lives in Haifa, Israel where his pastimes are bridge, chess, golf and travelling with his wife. This is his first novel.