Illustrated Book Review | Belonging by Nora Krug

In her latest young adult novel, The Assignment, author Liza Wiemer asks readers what they would do to stop antisemitism—or any form of hate or injustice.
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.’”
Thirty members of the Sayeret Matkal, the elite commando unit of the IDF that rescued hostages from a hijacked flight in Uganda, share their memories of the rescue in a book, newly translated from the Hebrew.
Angela Merkel, who just stepped down as German chancellor after a remarkable16 years, has redefined the image of a woman leader. A pastor’s daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, Merkel worked as a research chemist before entering politics and rising to become the unofficial leader of the West. Award-winning journalist Kati Marton, author of The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, shares how Merkel helped shape Germany into what some call the world’s moral center, and explores her legacy—including allowing Middle Eastern refugees to enter Germany while the world looked away. She also discusses the rise of the far right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and Merkel’s complicated relationships with other world leaders such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Marton is in conversation with Amy E. Schwartz, Moment’s Book & Opinion Editor.
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.
The time is summer, 1960; the place, Washington, DC; the protagonist, 16-year-old Carl Bernstein on his way to buy a suit for a job interview as a copy boy at the Evening Star, the city’s major afternoon paper at that time.
Barbara Goldberg’s poetry has always displayed an insatiable appetite for grief and desire.
Almost a half-century before Donald Trump signed on to the fraudulent notion that President Barack Obama’s American citizenship and constitutional legitimacy were suspect, Robert Welch (1899-1985) reached an equally alarming conclusion about the president of his day, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
This is a brilliant review. Thank you for illuminating this book so well. We are talking about it at our next book club.