Book Review | Hollywood Gets the Mamet Treatment
Through all the multiple David Mamets, one personality remains constant: a bold, aggressive, exceedingly confident, superbly well-read, arguably narcissistic provocateur.
Book Review | Revisiting a 1920s Thrill Kill
Jewish Baby Boomers like me grew up hearing about Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. because they were two intellectually precocious, rich Chicago teenagers who were also Jewish.
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 Baggage You Can’t Leave Behind
A tradition at my friend’s Passover seder is for guests to go around the table and say what they would carry with them when leaving Egypt.
Book Review | The Voice Behind the ‘SWISH!’
For more than four decades after he was suddenly and unceremoniously removed from participation in the 100-meter relay race at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Marty Glickman—then a young athlete, later a beloved voice of New York sports radio—vaguely and quietly chalked up the greatest disappointment of his life to “politics.”
Partly Cloudy Reads for Your Beach Bag
When anxieties are rippling through the culture, novelists can’t help picking up the signal.
Book Review | The Truth Only Fiction Can Touch
After Italian philosopher Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose (1980), to worldwide critical acclaim and instant bestsellerdom, scores of major humanities scholars started thinking about fiction as a possible genre for them too.
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.
And the Bride Closed the Door by Ronit Matalon with Shulamit Reinharz
“And the Bride Closed the Door” is a broad comedy about a bride who refuses to go forward with her wedding ceremony, sowing havoc. The book captures a segment of Mizrahi society not often featured in Israeli fiction.
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.
Literary Moment | Traveling the Land, Book in Hand
It is very difficult to come up with a catalog of books for a literary tour of Israel. No matter how long the list, there will always be disagreements and arguments about the canon, what is included and what is left out.
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.