Interview: Geraldine Brooks on Lessons From the ‘Plague Village’
"Any sacrifice to save human life is, by definition, vital."...
books Tag
Book Review | ‘We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders’
In his foreword to Linda Sarsour’s memoir of political activism, Harry Belafonte remarks, “It wasn’t that long ago that we lost Martin and Malcom and Bobby.” He is comparing the vilification of Sarsour, the hijab-wearing, Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American, for her anti-Israeli politics to the murderous racist...
The Purple Gang: Kosher Kings of Detroit
The Purple Gang was the only Jewish gang to ever dominate the underworld in a major American city. But judging by their obscurity in the decades following their demise, you would hardly know it. A new book chronicles the gang’s rise, fall, and subsequent vanishing...
What to Read: A Sampling of the Ways the World Ends
Something about watching civilization and its institutions collapse makes me nostalgic for the dystopian novels of my childhood....
Book Review | Unasked Questions About Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince
MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman By Ben Hubbard Tim Duggan Books 384 pp., $28 [divider] Where does one begin? Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and likely its next king, emerged almost out of nowhere. His father, Salman, the current king, was not...
Beshert | This Isn’t What I Ordered
"I dreamed of certain outcomes. But it’s the ones I didn’t see coming that feel exactly right—beshert."...
Coronavirus Quarantine Reading List
More than a month ago, I was in southern California with the preparedness prophet Max Brooks discussing the coronavirus. “We can’t blow this off!” he warned me. The 40-something author of the bestselling World War Z was carefully tracking the trajectory of the virus on...
Book Review | When the Ivory Tower Closed Its Gates
Imagine a U.S. law that kept thousands of European Jews and others from obtaining visas to the United States in the 1930s, leaving many of them to deportation and death....
Book Review | The Israeli-Palestinian Infinite Polygon
Apeirogon, the new novel by acclaimed author Colum McCann, could take place anywhere, yet is also essentially...
Primo Levi’s Work Outshines His Murky Death
In the years since his death, scholars, biographers and those who knew him remain split....