Book Review | Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie Studio
Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. The Warner Brothers. Theirs was a family show, one for all and all for one.
20
Nov
03
Oct
Book Review | Jewish Comedy: A Serious history
Funny Jews: An Epistolary Conversation
08
Sep
Book Review | The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis
One Shabbat, toward the end of the morning service, Tova Mirvis was stricken by a debilitating headache, in which “the pain concentrated along the line where my hat met my head.”
08
Sep
Book Review | Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss
In three of her novels thus far, Nicole Krauss inhabits multiple points of view, exploring the almost mystical ways in which lives that seem separate can intertwine.
02
Aug
Book Review | For Two Thousand Years by Mihail Sebastian
Iosef’s version of a “safe space” is a filthy, unheated Jewish dorm where students occasionally die of tuberculosis, or a lecture on a random topic in a hall where he can duck in and hide while running from his attackers—for a full five minutes, until they find him and drag him out. As Iosef puts it one afternoon, “I received two punches during today’s lectures and I took eight pages of notes. Good value, for two punches.” Microaggressions, indeed.
31
Jul
What We’re Reading | Lucky Broken Girl
It’s not every day that an adult in her mid-80s can read a book meant for fifth-graders (ages 10-11) and be reduced to tears.
24
May
Book Review | The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age by Steven Weitzman
As the subtitle of the book says, we live in a rootless age. People everywhere, not just Jews, seek their roots, their ancestry, their genetic makeup. We yearn to discover who we are; alas, our tools are not always up to the task. But there is pleasure in the pursuit, and we should be grateful to Weitzman for being a reliable guide.
24
May
Book Review | The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East by Guy Laron
Guy Laron’s challenging new book, The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East, is well worth reading even though Laron, a lecturer in international relations at Hebrew University, focuses too much on the war’s international context and, at times, relies too heavily upon unsubstantiated speculation
23
May
Book Review | The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova
Bulgaria. How little thought I had ever given to Bulgaria, but here it is in the vivid, fast-paced, fascinating new novel The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova. Author of the best-selling novel The Historian, Kostova is a writer who knows how to keep you in suspense, to frighten and amaze you, all while building characters whose fate will matter to you more and more as she reveals a whole country, its history, its tragedy, its politics, its scenery and its sad beauty.
16
May
Is Germany Moving Away From Holocaust Angst?
The notion that Germany has special responsibilities due to the Holocaust influences Merkel’s outlook on the world significantly. But this is not to say everything is rosy.