Book Review | The Maker and Breaker of Ideas
In 1974, Martin Peretz and his wife Anne bought The New Republic with her money.
Book Review | The Many Layers of Jewish Identity
Forsaking one’s native country for another place can create an odd mix of new and old identities.
Book Review | America, Jews and Israel— It’s Complicated
The story of the interactions between Jews in Israel and the Jewish and gentile supporters of Israel in the United States is complex and colored by the unique conditions that led to Israel’s birth.
An Interview with Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt
“Antisemitism is like the canary in the coal mine of democracy,” says the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism.
An Interview with Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova
Accepting Moment’s Women in Power Award, Ambassador Markarova spoke about the importance of ongoing U.S. support for Ukraine, the challenges of serving in wartime and what it’s like to work with President Volodymr Zelenskyy.
Book Review | The Journey of a Baghdadi Dynasty
The Sassoons were Baghdadi Jewish merchants whose patriarch fled an autocratic Ottoman governor, first to Iran and then, in 1832, to Bombay (today’s Mumbai).
Book Review | Very, Very Dirty Money
The stories that David de Jong first reported for Bloomberg News and now recounts in his book Nazi Billionaires document the sordid embrace of the Nazi regime by Germany’s wealthiest industrial dynasties and those dynasties’ continued prosperity today.
Book Review | A Family of Ambitious Aristocrats
The Morgenthaus, the late New York mayor Ed Koch once said, were “the closest thing we’ve got to royalty in New York City.”
Book Review | The Evolution of Tyranny
Thirty years ago, as the Soviet Union was coming apart and its hold on Eastern Europe was loosening, democracy appeared ascendant not just in Europe but worldwide. For advocates of democratic government, the 20th century concluded on a triumphant note. Today that note is a distant, barely audible signal from a bygone era.
Book Review | Amos Oz Looks Back at Literature
In the midst of a long conversation about men, women, love, sex and his own adolescence, the late Amos Oz reminds his interlocutor Shira Hadad that “the most important word in our whole conversation today is ‘sometimes.’”
Book Review | The Ripples Before the Storm
Munich in the years following World War I was a nasty, bloody microcosm of the political catastrophes in Europe that preceded and followed Germany’s defeat in that war.
Reflections on January 6, One Year Later
Throughout the Trump presidency, the summer of Black Lives Matter protests and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when asked about the alarming degree of polarization and anger in politics, I would always offer by way of comparison a time when I thought things had been worse: 1968.