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How dangerous is ‘Mein Kampf’?
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s memoir-cum-polemic, became a best-seller in Germany once the Nazi leader became dictator and made his book required reading for the entire nation. Today, the 700-page-long...
View ArticleThe real Anne Frank
Anne Frank: The Biography, by Melissa Muller, Picador, 480 pages, $18. German author Melissa Muller set out to find Anne Frank, the person beneath the legend, to create “as authentic a picture of...
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How to cope with narcissists among us
You may not realize it when you first pick up a copy of Jeffrey Kluger’s latest book, The Narcissist Next Door (Riverhead Books, 2014, $14.99), but they really are everywhere. As the title suggests,...
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Marcia Falk’s open-heart approach
Marcia Falk: “How do you stay open and awake all the time?” Time, says poet Marcia Falk, is both linear and cyclical. “There is the idea of moving forward and that every moment is not repeatable. So...
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Broken Hallelujah
David: The Divided Heart by David Wolpe. Yale Jewish Lives, 184 pp. $25 The name David means “beloved,” and the Israelite king bearing that name was – and remains – just that. “To this day at almost...
View ArticleBook review: Stories from another time
by Aaron Leibel Uzbekistan Stories: A Jewish Medic During WWII by Herman Taube. Washington, D.C.: Dryad Press, 2014. 50 pp. $12 Herman Taube’s life, like the lives of millions of other European Jews,...
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Dr. Ruth returns
Dr. Ruth Westheimer meets President Obama. Photo courtesy of White House Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the world’s most famous sex therapist, is coming to D.C. The pint-sized (4 feet 7 inches) professor at...
View ArticleReview: It’s not good for the Jews
Israel: Is it Good for the Jews? by Richard Cohen. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2014. 244 pp. $26. Israel: Is it Good for the Jews is not only extremely well written but is chock full of interesting...
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A love that shouldn’t have been
Timeless: Love, Morgenthau and Me, by Lucinda Franks. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 390 pages. $28. If opposites attract, it’s little wonder that recovering radical Lucinda Franks and...
View ArticleEichmann: An enthusiastic murderer
Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth. New York: Knopf, 2014. 579 pages. $35. Bettina Stangneth quickly and thoroughly demolishes Adolf Eichmann’s...
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Dressed for success
“Soup made you skinny. Bread made strength. So I ate as much bread as I could scavenge,” Martin Greenfield writes in his memoir, “Measure of a Man.” As he was being separated from his family by Nazis...
View ArticleReview: Poetry in motion
by Aaron Leibel Seasons of Prayer by Sherri Waas Shunfenthal. Pocol Press, 2014 125 pp. $14.95. Judaism and poetry would seem to be an ideal fit. Our presumed psalm writer David appears to have...
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The best book I read this year
Anne Frank, by Melissa Muller (Metropolitan Books) I was totally surprised at the spellbinding excellence of Anne Frank: The Biography, a revised edition of Melissa Müller’s 1998 book, with 30 percent...
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Lone star of David
To hear Nick Kotz tell it, it was good to be a Jew in Texas at the turn of the 20th century. Especially when you consider the alternatives. Kotz’s grandfather Nathan Kallison escaped Russia for America...
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Fleeing custody or in cold blood – how was Avraham Stern killed?
The Reckoning: Death and Intrigue in the Promised Land by Patrick Bishop. New York: Harper Collins, 2014. 299 pages. $26.99. This intriguing book delves into the circumstances surrounding the death of...
View ArticleJewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges
John Biggers intended to become a plumber. But when he took a drawing class in 1941 at Hampton Institute, a black college in West Virginia, Biggers’ life changed. He went on to become a renowned artist...
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How America welcomed Nazis to its shores
Review The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men, by Eric Lichtblau. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 266 pages. $25. If you’re feeling chilly these winter nights,...
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Whose world order?
World Order by Henry Kissinger. New York: Penguin Press, 2014 374 pp. $36. Long ago, I was on track to become a political scientist. Then, Israel happened, and I became a journalist. I have no regrets,...
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Jewish Lives is first series to win Jewish Book of the Year
David Bezmozgis, winner of the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Jewish fiction for The Betrayers. Photo by Joe Kohen Jewish Book Council has for the first time in its history given its top honor to a...
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Bully pulpit
Whipping Boy, by Allen Kurzweil. New York: Harper, 292 pp. $27.99. Everybody has a bully. That fact opened more than one door for Allen Kurzweil as he conducted his middle-aged search for his childhood...
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