Fiction // Lead Apron

I am 22 and pregnant, which means I’m not a teen statistic, but you can chalk me up to the idiot percentages who think they know what they’re doing with a condom. When I was a kid, I planned my future around a timeline like the one I’m in. Then again, when I was a kid I planned to explore the earth by sea. Now there are no explorers left: satellites can read your watch from space and planes can take you across the planet in a day…

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A World Without Jews by Alon Confino cover

Book Review // A World Without Jews

No topic in history has provoked a greater outpouring of books and treatises than Hitler’s Third Reich. As of 1995 there were 25,000 titles on the Nazi era, and by the year 2000, the total reached “a whopping 37,000,” according to author Alon Confino, who cites a scholarly list compiled in Darmstadt. This continuing flood attests to the ongoing struggle, within and without Germany, to comprehend the motivations behind the rise of National Socialism and its monstrous offspring, the Holocaust.

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The Life of Saul Bellow to Fame and Fortune

Book Review // The Life of Saul Bellow

As he lay dying, Saul Bellow, “the most decorated writer in American history,” slipped back into consciousness, looked up, and asked, “Was I a man or was I a jerk?” Somewhere within that sentence lies Bellow’s greatness as a novelist—his fabulous sense of wonder and entitlement about himself, coupled with a magical gift for language and a rattling insecurity. This is what Zachary Leader writes about in his doggedly detailed and adoring biography of Bellow.

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