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Welcome to our pages of Fall 2009 and Summer 2009 and oh so many more Book Suggestions. For our Home Page, Please visit MyJewishBooks.com

SOME LATE FALL 2009 and WINTER 2010 BOOK READINGS

Nov 22, 2009: 11th Annual Jewish Children�s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference. 92ndSt Y, NYC $135
See http://www.92y.org/content/pdf/BookConferenceApplication.pdf

Dec 01, 2009 Merrill Perlman speaks on Copy Editing NYPL Mid Manhattan Branch 6:30 PM
Dec 02, 2009 UCLA Center for Jewish Studies hosts Paul Dry on �The Parnas (by my fave author Silvano Arieti).. A scene from the Holocaust in Italy, LA CA
Dec 02, 2009: Andrea Most on �Life Upon the Wicked Stage. Jews and Popular Entertainment in America�. Columbia University IIJS, NYC 8PM
Dec 05, 2009: NOAH ALPER reads from BUSINESS MENSCH. Jewish Book Festival of Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys. Pasadena CA
Dec 05-13, 2009: 24th Israel Film Festival in NYC IsraelFilmFestival.com
Dec 06, 2009: Yehuda Berg reads from Kabbalah, The Power to Change Everything. B&N Boca Raton
Dec 10, 2009: Workmen�s Circle Fund Raiser with Theodore Bikel. See Circle.org
Dec 23-29, 2009: 25th Anniversary of KlezKamp. KlezKamp 25. LivingTraditions.org Kerhonkson, NY

Jan 07, 2010: Danielle Ofri reads from �Medicine in Translation� B&N. NYC 82nd Bway
Jan 07, 2010: Early Jewish-American Literature. Jewish-American Lower East Side writers who shaped the American literary cannon. Featured books/writers include "Out of the Shadow" by Rose Cohen and "The Bread Givers" by Anzia Yezierska. With Annie Polland, Suzanne Wasserman, and Sanford Sternlicht. Tenement Museum Shop, NYC
Jan 10, 2010: Art And The Aftermath of Genocide. Center for Jewish History, NYC
Jan 10, 2010: Exploring the World of Tzedakaj: Priorities and Goals in A World of Limited Resources. With Rabbi Dov Linzer and Mrs. Elana Stein Hain and Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot. YCT Rabbinical School, Lincoln Sq. Synagogue, NYC
Jan 15-18, 2010: LimmudNY.org at The Hudson Valley Resort, NY
Jan 20, 2010: Danielle Ofri reads from �Medicine in Translation� B&N. Bethesda
Jan 25, 2010: The History of the Translation of the Hebrew Bible At Skirball Center NYC
Jan 27, 2010: Faith and Loneliness and the Philosophy of Joseph P. Soloveitchik. At Skirball Center NYC
Jan 31, 2010: Is Judaism (Just) Another Fundamentalism? At Skirball Center NYC

Feb 04, 2010: Risa Miller reads from �My Before and After Life� B&N. Bca Raton
Feb 2010: Month of Feb - Seforim Sales at SOY Yeshiva Univ with lectures>BR> Feb 6, 2010: Karlin-Stolin Melavah Malka. 5th Avenue Synagogue NYC 8PM
Feb 7-8, 2010: Aesthetics After The Holocaust. Exploring the Problem of Aesthetic Reactions to the Holocaust. With Carol Bakhos, Eric Sundquist, Gary Weissman, Sharon Oster, Monica Osborne, Joshue Hirsch, Brett Kaplan, Dora Apel, Lawrence Langer, Amy Hungerford, and more. UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. LA CA
Feb 7, 2010: 6th Annual Day of Kabbalah. JCC Manhattan
Feb 9, 2010: Jean Naggar reads from SIPING FROM THE NILE. Edmond Safra Shul, NYC
Feb 11, 2010: Sasha Rothchild reads from �How To Get Divorced by 30� B&N. Los Angeles Farmer�s Mkt
Feb 19-21: The Jewlicious 6.0 Festival, Long Beach CA. See Jewlicious.com
Feb 14, 2010: Behavior Therapy Training Institute. Suny Downstate, NYC. OCD TrainingInstitute with special lecture for therapists on OCD among Orthodox Jewish adherents and Religiosity
Feb 21, 2010: The (His)Story of the Siddur? At Skirball Center NYC
Feb 22, 2010: Do Judge a Book By Its Cover; A Look Behind the Covers of American Jewish Prayerbooks. At Skirball Center NYC
Feb 24, 2010: Rabbi Sharon Shalom (Bar Ilan) speaks on his birth in Ethiopia and the plight of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Fifth Avenue Synagogue NYC
Feb 26, 2010: Film: The Name My Mother Gave Me. JCC of Manhattan UWS NYC
Feb 27, 2010: Purim

Mar 07, 2010: Songs We Much Sing and Little Understand. (Ma�oz Tsur, Adon Olam, Unetaneh Tokef, and other Middle Age piyyutim) with Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb. At Skirball Center NYC
Mar 14, 2010: The JOFA Conference, Columbia University, NYC Jofa.Org
June 5-12, 2010: Trip to Israel. Israel Behind the Headlines w/ Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The NY Jewish Week newspaper. GilTravel.com

This book got a lot of attention when it was mentioned in a column by David Brooks in the New York Times Op-Ed page (Titled, The Tel Aviv Cluster)

The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement
The Compendium of a Culture, a People, and Their Stunning Performance
By Steven L. Pease
December 2009
Kirkus wrote -- An exhaustive examination of Jewish achievement over the past 200 years. Pease, who is not Jewish, explains that from a young age he has had an interest in and empathy for the Jewish people, and that many of his friends and colleagues are Jewish. However, simple curiosity led him to ask how such a tiny group of people could have such a major impact upon culture and society. The more the author researched the role of Jews in the modern world, the more impressed he became. Pease explains that in a room filled with a thousand people representing the diversity of the globe, only two would be Jewish. Nevertheless, Jewish achievements belie those statistics. From the number of Nobel Prize winners, to the percent of students on Ivy League campuses, to the notables on various Greatest 100 lists of historical figures, Jews have a consistently strong showing despite their otherwise small world presence. Though the author discusses Jews throughout history, his real focus is on the period since the Jewish Emancipation dating back to the age of Napoleon. At this point, Pease argues, Jews began to have greater opportunities to contribute to national and global cultures. The bulk of the book is dedicated to documenting individual and collective Jewish achievements, from Milton Friedman to Barbra Streisand and from the Six-Day War to real estate development. The author finally provides an analysis of this data, concluding that Jewish culture, above any other factor, has contributed to such high achievement. Cultural focuses on family, education, autonomy, moderation and charity have all contributed. Readers may wish Pease had delved deeper into what it means to be a Jew, both culturally and religiously, and the manner and extent to which some people profiled in his book actually considered themselves Jewish. Still, this is an impressive tome. An intriguing look at the modern history of an outstanding people
Pease, who resides in the Conoma Valley of California, was born and raised Presbyterian in Spokane, Washington. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Washington with a master�s degree from Harvard Business School. He currently serves as co-chairman of the U.S. Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law, and Chairman of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund. Both are nonprofit entities; organized by the United States government to work with Russians, encourage entrepreneurship, civil society, and the rule of law, while also improving the U.S. - Russia relationship.
Click the book cover to read more.

GRATITUDE
A Novel
By Joseph Kertes
October 2009, Thomas Dunne
This new novel by the Canadian author is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award which will be presented in march 2010 by the Jewish Book Council
From Publishers Weekly: Kertes digs into the experiences of a family of wealthy Hungarian Jews in the darkest moments of WWII in his proficient latest. An ensemble piece, the novel's main character is Paul Beck, a lawyer stripped of his profession who takes great risks to protect his family, including posing as a Swedish diplomat to stop a train taking his family to a concentration camp. His politician father is executed, his dentist brother hides for several months in his assistant's home, and his sister mourns the disappearance of her lover. Eventually, the tide begins to turn as the Russians arrive, though the Russian presence presents a new set of problems. Kertes leavens the grim material with a few lighter scenes of the Becks trying to make the most of a horrible situation, which goes a long way to making them an endearing and memorable group, while the author's straightforward style moves the story along at a healthy clip
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MRS. GREENBERG'S MESSY HANUKKAH
By LINDA GLASER
Albert Whitman
From Booklist: Ages 5 - 7. What's the first night of Hanukkah without latkes? But Rachel's parents are too busy to think about cooking, so Rachel pays a visit to elderly Mrs. Greenberg, whose sparkling kitchen begs to be invaded by an energetic little girl with potato pancakes on her mind. Pretty soon potatoes, flour, and eggs coat the floor, and an exhausted Mrs. Greenberg has collapsed in a chair. When Rachel's parents arrive, they focus on the mess, and a tearful Rachel apologizes. Then Mrs. Greenberg comes to the rescue, declaring firmly, "My house hasn't felt this lived in in years." Pattern and bright color abound in Cote's lighthearted, cartoonlike pictures, which channel the glow of the menorah on the table right onto the happy faces of the characters as they sit down to eat Rachel's latkes. A recipe, at the front of the book, completes this lively package, suggested for children who are already familiar with the holiday.
BLURB: Though it's the first night of Hanukkah, Rachel's family won't really be celebrating until next week. But Rachel wants to celebrate now, so she comes up wtih a good idea: while her parents do errands, she'll visit her neighbor, Mrs. Greenberg, and they can make latkes together. The two head into Mrs. Greenberg's shiny, tidy kitchen and begin grating the potatoes. But Rachel's gratings slide off the table and onto the floor. Before long, Rachel has dropped an egg, spilled the flour, and dribbled the oil. Mrs. Greenberg is exhausted, Rachel's mom and dad are horrified, and Rachel is afraid she's ruined a friendship by making this terrible mess. She is relieved and delighted to find that Mrs. Greenberg thinks it's a wonderful mess--her house hasn't felt so lived-in in years
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Happy Hanukkah, Corduroy
A Board book
by Don Freeman with Lisa McCue (Illustrator)
2009, Viking
Ages 0 � 2
Celebrate the festival of lights with Corduroy. Corduroy�s having a Hanukkah party for all of his friends. First they light the menorah, then they eat yummy potato pancakes. After they open presents, there�s time for a game of dreidel. Introduce little boys and girls to all of the Hanukkah traditions with Corduroy, one of the most beloved children�s books characters for over forty years.
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A Chanukah Present For Me!
A Board book
by Scholastic
2009, Scholastic
Ages up to 3
It looks like a wrapped gift
A great miracle happened...and now it is time for a great celebration. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHANUKAH is a playful holiday format that mimics a wrapped gift box. With glitter flocking and an embossed "bow," this simple story highlights the most popular Chanukah icons and traditions as family members share their favorite parts of the holiday, like doughnuts. From the menorah to latkes to chocolate gelt, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHANUKAH is the gift that keeps on giving.
Click the book cover to read more.

Hanukkah Lights
A Board book
by David Martin
2009, Candlewick
Ages 1 � 3
Candles on the menorah, ready to light! At Hanukkah, there are many much-anticipated rituals � latkes to eat, dreidels to spin, presents to give and receive, and shiny gold treats. Add some free-form fun, from shadow puppetry to singing and dancing, and you have a warm, truly child-friendly celebration.
Click the book cover to read more.

HOPPY HANUKKAH!
BY LINDA GLASER
2009, Whitman
Ages 2 � 5
Violet and Simon, two small bunnies, are excited about Hanukkah. Simon is ready to light all the candles and then blow them right out! But Mama and Papa explain how to celebrate Hanukkah by lighting one candle each night at sunset and placing the menorah in the window for all to see. Grandma and Grandpa come over, too, and there are latkes and presents and a dreidel game. Linda Glaser's simple, cozy story is just right for children first learning about this holiday. Daniel Howarth's charming paintings show a happy family passing on their tradition.
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MY CHANUKAH PLAYBOOK
BY SALINA YOON
2009, Little Simon
Ages 3 � 5
Chanukah is coming and it's time to learn about the celebration of lights and light the candles on the menorah! With 8 foiled board play pieces and interactive notches on every spread, children can learn about learn the meaning of celebrating Chanukah and some of the delicious foods, festive games, and songs that are shared during the holiday. The final spread features a full length menorah with bold candles and a slots above each candle where the play pieces slip in to bring foiled light to each candle.
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MENORAH UNDER THE SEA
BY ESTHER SUSAN HELLER
2009, Kar-Ben
Ages 5 - 9
Diving for sea urchins at the bottom of the frigid sea, marine biologist David Ginsburg brings Hanukkah to Antarctica with a most unusual holiday celebration. The book contains pictures of his trip. He dives down and makes a menorah of urchins (no candles), and then on the surface lights his travel menorah with his other Jewish scientists stationed at the South Pole.
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Can I Have a Cell Phone For Hanukkah?
The Essential Scoop on Raising Modern Jewish Kids
By Sharon Duke Estroff
Broadway Books
How do you help your child choose between mandatory baseball practice and Hebrew school? How can you plan a birthday party (not to mention bar or bat mitzvah party!) for your child without sacrificing your values, sanity, and pocketbook? How can you keep peace on the homework homefront? And how do you deal with Santa envy-let alone the entire month of December? What if your child is invited a party on Shabbat? How do handle Santa envy? As any modern Jewish parent knows, balancing family traditions and the realities of contemporary culture can be incredibly challenging. Answering questions both old and new, Jewish and secular, internationally syndicated parenting columnist and award-winning Jewish educator and mother of four, Sharon Duke Estroff illuminates the ways that Jewish tradition can be used to form a lasting, emotional safety net for modern families. Can I Have a Cell Phone for Hanukkah? is an instant classic. Click the book cover to read more.

The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho
Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity
Jewish History, Life, and Culture
By Judith Noem� Freidenberg
December 2009, University of Texas
By the mid-twentieth century, Eastern European Jews had become one of Argentina's largest minorities. Some represented a wave of immigration begun two generations before; many settled in the province of Entre R�os and founded an agricultural colony. Taking its title from the resulting hybrid of acculturation, The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho examines the lives of these settlers, who represented a merger between native cowboy identities and homeland memories. The arrival of these immigrants in what would be the village of Villa Clara coincided with the nation's new sense of liberated nationhood. In a meticulous rendition of Villa Clara's social history, Judith Freidenberg interweaves ethnographic and historical information to understand the saga of European immigrants drawn by Argentine open-door policies in the nineteenth century and its impact on the current transformation of immigration into multicultural discourses in the twenty-first century. Using Villa Clara as a case study, Freidenberg demonstrates the broad power of political processes in the construction of ethnic, class, and national identities. The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho draws on life histories, archives, material culture, and performances of heritage to enhance our understanding of a singular population--and to transform our approach to social memory itself.
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Koestler
The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic
By Michael Scammell
December 2009, Random House
From award-winning author Michael Scammell comes a monumental achievement: the first authorized biography of Arthur Koestler, one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Over a decade in the making, and based on new research and full access to its subject�s papers, Koestler is the definitive account of this fascinating and polarizing figure. Though best known as the creator of the classic anti-Communist novel Darkness at Noon, Koestler is here revealed as much more�a man whose personal life was as astonishing as his literary accomplishments. Koestler portrays the anguished youth of a boy raised in Budapest by a possessive and mercurial mother and an erratic father, marked for life by a forced operation performed without anesthesia when he was five, growing up feeling unloved and unprotected. Here is the young man whose experience of anti-Semitism and devotion to Zionism provoked him to move to Palestine; the foreign correspondent who risked his life from the North Pole to Franco�s Spain, where he was imprisoned and sentenced to death; the committed Communist for whom the brutal truth of Stalin�s show trials inspired the superb and angry novel that became an instant classic in 1940. Scammell also provides new details of Koestler�s amazing World War II adventures, including his escape from occupied France by joining the Foreign Legion and his bluffing his way illegally to England, where his controversial novel Arrival and Departure, published in 1943, was the first to portray Hitler�s Final Solution.
Without sentimentality, Scammell explores Koestler�s turbulent private life: his drug use, his manic depression, the frenetic womanizing that doomed his three marriages and led to an accusation of rape that posthumously tainted his reputation, and his startling suicide while fatally ill in 1983�an act shared by his healthy third wife, Cynthia�rendered unforgettably as part of his dark and disturbing legacy. Featuring cameos of famous friends and colleagues including Langston Hughes, George Orwell, and Albert Camus, Koestler gives a full account of the author�s voluminous writings, making the case that the autobiographies and essays are fit to stand beside Darkness at Noon as works of lasting literary value. Koestler adds up to an indelible portrait of this brilliant, unpredictable, and talented writer, once memorably described as �one third blackguard, one third lunatic, and one third genius.�
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MAIMONIDES, SPINOZA, AND US
TOWARD AN INTELLECTUALLY VIBRANT JUDAISM
By MARC D. ANGEL, RABBI
December 2009, Jewish Lights
A challenging look at two great Jewish philosophers, and what their thinking means to our understanding of God, truth, revelation and reason. Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) is Jewish history's greatest exponent of a rational, philosophically sound Judaism. He strove to reconcile the teachings of the Bible and rabbinic tradition with the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that religion and philosophy ultimately must arrive at the same truth. Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is Jewish history's most illustrious "heretic." He believed that truth could be attained through reason alone, and that philosophy and religion were separate domains that could not be reconciled. His critique of the Bible and its teachings caused an intellectual and spiritual upheaval whose effects are still felt today. Rabbi Marc D. Angel discusses major themes in the writings of Maimonides and Spinoza to show us how modern people can deal with religion in an intellectually honest and meaningful way. From Maimonides, we gain insight on how to harmonize traditional religious belief with the dictates of reason. From Spinoza, we gain insight into the intellectual challenges which must be met by modern believers.
Discover how Jewish theology became what it is today--and how it can affect the Jewish future. The views of Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza, both foundation stones of Jewish theology and philosophy, may differ more than they coincide. But by revisiting their philosophical arguments, in vigorous debate with each other, we can come to a deeper appreciation of the role of reason--and of revelation--in Judaism. Theologian Rabbi Marc D. Angel, PhD, explores how these two great thinkers came to formulate what we know as Jewish theology and philosophy today, incorporating the influences of Torah, rabbinic sages, Greek philosophy, and pre-modern and modern science. He breaks down their philosophical arguments with relevant historical detail, making them more accessible to a wide audience. His analysis touches on many provocative but vital questions of enduring importance, including: Can the revealed truth of religion and the empirical truth of science be reconciled? What is the nature of God? Can it be described? Is Torah really the perfect, errorless word of God? Does God play an active role in human affairs? What is the ultimate source of Truth? How important is it to observe ritual? Can Judaism be fully embraced by non-Jews?
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THE POLITICAL FIX
CHANGING THE GAME OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
FROM THE GRASSROOTS TO THE WHITE HOUSE
By DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN, D. Phil.
January 2010, Times Books
Schoen, a political advisor to Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Evan Bayh, Michael Bloomberg, Cecil Andrus, Paul Patton, Bob Miller (Nevada), John Breaux, the late New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John D. Rockefeller, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ehud Barak, and countless more; a former candidate himself; and the author of several books on politics and politicians, dissects the failures of modern politics and unveils tha practical-minded, citizen-powered solutions that can revive American democracy. Schoen not only explains the problems as so many pundits do, but he goes further and provides solutions and an action plan that can actually be done. Why not rotate the primaries in Presidential politics? Why must debates be moderated? Are Americans to weak to deal with unstructured debates? Do debates in the oval office have moderators? Should the Attorney General be a member of the cabinet? Schoen wants the AG to be separate from the cabinet. In NYC, residents can call the single 311 number for government customer service. Should this be a nationwide program? With the power of the web, why can�t all states post their checkbook online, as Alaska does. Schoen argues that the focus on capping the influence of large donors has cut off true, genuine election reform. Of course, he recommends a tax credit for small donors who controbute to political campaigns (which would help the coffers of political consultants and pollsters, but let�s not mention that)Click the book cover to read more.

Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature
By Chaya T. Halberstam
January 2010, Indiana University
How can humans ever attain the knowledge required to administer and implement divine law and render perfect justice in this world? Contrary to the belief that religious law is infallible, Chaya T. Halberstam shows that early rabbinic jurisprudence is characterized by fundamental uncertainty. She argues that while the Hebrew Bible created a sense of confidence and transparency before the law, the rabbis complicated the paths to knowledge and undermined the stability of personal status and ownership, and notions of guilt or innocence. Examining the facts of legal judgments through midrashic discussions of the law and evidence, Halberstam discovers that rabbinic understandings of the law were riddled with doubt and challenged the possibility of true justice. This book thoroughly engages law, narrative, and theology to explicate rabbinic legal authority and its limits.
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PALESTINIAN POLITICS AFTER ARAFAT
A FAILED NATIONAL MOVEMENT
By As�ad Ghenam (University of Haifa)
January 2010, Indiana University
The Palestinian national movement reached a dead-end and came close to disintegration at the beginning of the present century. The struggle for power after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 signaled the end of a path toward statehood prepared by the Oslo Accords a decade before. The reasons for the failure of the movement are deeply rooted in modern Palestinian history. As'ad Ghanem analyzes the internal and external events that unfolded as the Palestinian national movement became a "failed national movement," marked by internecine struggle and collapse, the failure to secure establishment of a separate state and achieve a stable peace with Israel, and the movement's declining stature within the Arab world and the international community.
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THE ARAB PUBLIC SPHERE IN ISRAEL
Media Space and Cultural Resistance
By Amal Jamal (University of Tel Aviv)
January 2010, Indiana University
In this pathbreaking study, Amal Jamal analyzes the consumption of media by Arab citizens of Israel as a type of communicative behavior and a form of political action. Drawing on extensive public opinion survey data, he describes perceptions and use of media ranging from Arabic Israeli newspapers to satellite television broadcasts from throughout the Middle East. By participating in this semi-autonomous Arab public sphere, the average Arab citizen can connect with a wider Arab world beyond the boundaries of the Israeli state. Jamal shows how media aid the community's ability to resist the state's domination, protect its Palestinian national identity, and promote its civic status.
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When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win
Reflections on Looking in the Mirror
by Carol Leifer
January 2010, now in paperback Villard
Booklist writes: Leifer uses her background in stand-up comedy to good effect in her collection of easy-to-read, column-length pieces that range from her finding her lesbian sexual identity at 40 (�If I don�t sleep with a woman soon, I think I�ll kill myself�) to her childhood disappointment at her dad�s �bargain� gift of a cheap Babblin� Barbara doll instead of the A-list Chatty Cathy she yearned for. Babblin� Babs was �a train wreck reeking of cheap Taiwanese sweatshop child-labor plastic . . . a speech-impaired whore . . . you didn�t want to play with as much as rush her to the emergency room.� Along the way she offers breezy observations on Jews celebrating Gentile holidays � la Jews for Jesus��like vegans for Burger King��and her heartfelt conversion to animal adoption that led to her current household of seven dogs, all rescues that have changed everything: �My life without loving animals is unimaginable to me now. It�s like living without air, without music.� All in all, Leifer presents a charming mix of outrageous fun shot through with poignant affirmation.
�These essays have stirred in me a foreign, disgusting and heretofore dormant urge to hug someone, in this case the author. If I become human as a result of reading this, so help me God I will sue her for every dollar she makes from this profound, insightful, and hilarious book.��Larry David
�I discovered Carol Leifer at an open mike night in the late 70's on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It didn't take me two seconds to realize how special her talent is. (Two seconds, that's how good I am, by the way). But she really has one of the most uniquely hilarious minds of anyone I've ever met. We have worked together on countless projects. If you have never heard how she thinks, this book is the perfect introduction.��Jerry Seinfeld
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My Before and After Life
A Novel
by Risa Miller
January 2010, St. Martin�s Press
Miller (Welcome to Heavenly Heights) focuses on an unrelentingly introspective attorney and her struggle with spirituality in the wake of her father�s sudden religious awakening. Honey Black and her sister, Susan, travel to Israel with the intention of bringing back their father, newly inducted into Orthodox Judaism, whose extended vacation they believe has plunged him into �temporary madness.� After they return home, without their father, Honey continues to brood over her time in Israel, specifically her experience praying in the caves of the countryside. Meanwhile, she�s taken on a case defending her predominantly Jewish (not necessarily Orthodox) neighborhood against the expansion of the Orthodox Brookline Hebrew Day School, bringing to light questions of spirituality as well as community division and religious prejudice. Though Honey is a satisfyingly complex character, her father, husband and sister never quite come to life. Still, Miller is extremely skilled in her exploration of religion as a personal decision, a profound experience and a source of surprise and wonder.
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EMISSARY OF THE DOOMED
BARGAINING FOR LIVES IN THE HOLOCAUST
BY RONALD FLORENCE
January 2010, Viking
The official little known WWII story of a desperate attempt to save Hungary's Jewish population. When Nazi troops invaded in March 1944, Hungary contained the largest intact Jewish population in Europe. Until then, stories of Auschwitz and other "resettlement camps" were still treated as unconfirmed rumors inside Hungary and among the Allied powers. With the arrival of Adolf Eichmann-and reports from the first escapees from Auschwitz confirming the most horrifying rumors about the camps-the 850,000 Jews of Hungary faced annihilation. Emissary of the Doomed is the riveting and heartbreaking account of the heroic attempt to save Hungary's Jewish population. Learning that Eichmann and Himmler were willing to bargain for the lives of as many as one million Jews, Joel Brand and the Jewish rescue committee in Budapest took up the German offer and embarked on a desperate race across Europe and the Middle East to persuade the reluctant Allies to trade funds and mat�riel for Jewish lives. Against the backdrop of the Normandy invasion, the Soviet advance across Eastern Europe, and the American advances up the Italian peninsula, Brand and his colleagues tried to stop the final push of the Nazis to destroy the Jews of Europe. This untold chapter will appeal to all readers of World War II literature.
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PER LA VITA
A CD IN GERMANY BY
von Bejarano & Microphone Mafia (K�nstler)
Featuring Esther Bejarano
2010
Esther B�jarano joins MICROPHONE MAFIA to spread the message of tolerance in Germany and Europe through hip-hop. Born in 1924, she is among the last survivors of the Girl orchestra of Auschwitz. B�jarano was born as Esther Loewy as a daughter of the Head Cantor of a Jewish municipality. The father encouraged his daughter to get interested in music and Esther learned to play the piano. At age 15 she had to separate from her parents, in order to prepare for emigration to Palestine. This emigration was thrwarted by the Nazis. She carried out two years of hard labour in Neuendorf Labour Camp close to F�rstenwalde/Spree. On April 20, 1943 all members of the labour camp were deported to Auschwitz. There she had to drag stones until she joined the Girl orchestra of Auschwitz. In the orchestra, she played the accordion. The orchestra had the task of playing for the daily march of the gangs by the camp gate. She survived Auschwitz after escaping in March, 1945. She emigrated to Palestine and returned later to Germany. At the beginning of the 1980s, with her daughter Edna and son Joram, she created the musical group Coincidence. They sing songs from the ghetto and Jewish as well as anti-fascist songs. B�jarano lives today in Hamburg. She is a co-founder and chairman of the Auschwitz Committee and was awarded the Carl-von-Ossietzky medal. She holds the Cross of Merit, First class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
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DID YOU HEAR THIS IN A RECENT BBC RADIO STORY?

Shir Hodu
Jewish Song From Bombay of 30's
Various Artists
Shir Hodu is the Hebrew for �Song of Praise.� It also means �Song of India.� This CD is the second in our series of remastered 78 recordings of Jewish song featuring Jewish singers and instrumentalists from Iraq and India. Following leads for these long lost original recordings Julian Futter and Dr Sara Manasseh were able to produce this extraordinary compilation of professional recordings in the Bene Israel and Baghdadian Jewish traditions, made originally on the King, Hebrew and Jay Bharat Record labels. Among the performers, all well-known in their communities, are Hazzanim (cantors, prayer leaders) and shofar (Ram�s horn) blowers, a meat shop owner, music school directors, and instrumental stars of the Indian cinema. This musical link with the past has been vividly brought to life by the memories and photos of the descendants, relatives and friends of the singers and instrumentalists, gathered from across the globe. The CD comes with a copiously illustrated 24-page booklet that will serve as a valuable source for future researchers into Indian Jewish musical traditions. Sensitive remastering allows us to hear these recordings as they have never been heard before
Contents include: Simeon Jacob Kharilker (King Records) 1 Adon Olam Lord of the world 3.31 2 Yom Hashabbat The Sabbath day 3.30 3 Deror Ikhra Let freedom be proclaimed 3.17 4 Ashir Lael I will sing to the Lord 3.11 5 Yaroom Venisa He will be exalted and raised 3.13 6 Hatikvah & �l Sh�mor Hamm�l�kh The hope & God save the king 3.19
Abid David (Hebrew Record) 7 Hai Hai El Hai The living God 3.20 8 Deror Yikra Let freedom be proclaimed 2.52
Zaky Solomon Isaac (Hebrew Record) 9 Aet Shaare Rason The time of (opening of) the gates of mercy 3.17 10 Ado-nai Becol Shophar The Lord is in the sound of the shof�r 2.54 11 Yodukha Raayonai My thoughts will praise You 3.04 12 Yom Hashabat The Sabbath day 3.01 13 Yom Simha A day of rejoicing 2.59
N.S. Satamkar (Jay Bharat Records) 14 Deror Iqra Let freedom be proclaimed 3.24 15 Yom Hashabat The Sabbath day
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GOOD ARABS
The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948�1967
By Hillel Cohen, trans. from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman.
January 2010, University of California
PW writes: Israeli writer Cohen (Army of Shadows) makes extensive use of the thousands of recently declassified Israeli government and police files to argue that Israel has attempted, from its earliest days, to control and co-opt the lives of its Palestinian citizens (roughly 20% of the population) and has utilized classic tools of social control�informants, censorship, offers of reward and threats of punishment�to neutralize a potentially �seditious� faction and to turn the community �from members of the imagined Palestinian community/nation... into members of Israeli civil society.� He explores how deeply Israel infiltrated Palestinian communities, political groups and refugee camps to secure informants and create a veritable �collaborator class� to �ensure a maximal control over the political and social behavior of Israel�s Arab population.� Stressing that the behavior of both sides is typical of national majority-minority relationships everywhere, he shows the extent to which Israel has treated its Arab citizens as one-dimensional characters open to manipulation, and shrewdly observes that the irony for Israel is that because the state couldn�t offer non-Jewish citizens �a real path to participation... the state actually reinforced Arab identity among its Arab citizens.�
From the Inside Flap
�ascinating story. . . . With the publication of this book, we can abandon several accepted clich�s."--Ha'aretz
�While many Israelis--Jews and Palestinians alike--already had a sense that these shadowplays were part of the state's history, Aravim Tovim (Good Arabs) supplies the evidence. Case after case is summoned to illustrate how collaboration permeated all aspects of Palestinian society."--The Nation
"The impressive achievement of this timely book is its equal and honest treatment of the explosive issues involved in spite of an often agonizing conflict of interests--and its articulation of the author's findings with empathy, boldness and fairness."--Jerusalem Post
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Paper Fortunes
Modern Wall Street;
Where It's Been and Where It's Going
By Roy C. Smith
January 2010, St. Martins
Paper Fortunes is the richly-detailed story of Wall Street from post-war heyday to present woes, from a player whose experiences, profiles of the colorful personalities involved and learned observations of the forces shaping the business make it insightful and timely. Smith, a long-time Goldman Sachs banker and now a distinguished NYU professor of finance, enables anyone working on the Street, investing with it, or just appalled by its worst shenanigans to understand how the industry has grown, changed and evolved, and what its future prospects are. From various Goldmans, Sachses, and Lehmans through to Richard Fuld, Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner, Andre Meyer at Lazard, Michael Bloomberg, Sidney Weinberg, and more Paper Fortunes tells the ongoing story of the shifting U.S. market economy through the actions of the people who've shaped it for the last 60 years and will shape it for the next 60 years.
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TOWERS OF GOLD
How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
By Frances Dinkelspiel
January 2010,
The author is the great great granddaughter of Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, who arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side.
By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought California into modernity. Ripe with great historical events that filled the early days of California such as the Gold Rush and the San Francisco earthquake, Towers of Gold brings to life the transformation of California from a frontier society whose economy was driven by the barter of hides and exchange of gold dust into a vibrant state with the strongest economy in the nation. Click the book cover to read more.

Remembering Survival
Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp
By Christopher R. Browning
February 2010, Norton
A remarkable story of survival for almost three hundred Jews who live to recount the brutalities of a Nazi work camp. In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, the German chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 to slave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despite the incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives this author�s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowice slave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiences and survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policies and personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the market square in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, there are stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperate choices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In the end, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews of survival. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina.
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A LETHAL OBSESSION
ANTI-SEMITISM FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE GLOBAL JIHAD
BY ROBERT S. WISTRICH
January 2010, Random House
Ohh�. About 1,184 pages
In this unprecedented work two decades in the making, leading historian Robert S. Wistrich examines the long and ugly history of anti-Semitism, from the first recorded pogrom in 38 BCE to its shocking and widespread resurgence in the present day. As no other book has done before it, A Lethal Obsession reveals the causes behind this shameful and persistent form of hatred and offers a sobering look at how it may shake and reshape the world in years to come. Here are the fascinating and long-forgotten roots of the �Jewish difference��the violence that greeted the Jewish Diaspora in first-century Alexandria. Wistrich suggests that the idea of a formless God who passed down a universal moral law to a chosen few deeply disconcerted the pagan world. The early leaders of Christianity increased their strength by painting these �superior� Jews as a cosmic and satanic evil, and by the time of the Crusades, murdering a �Christ killer� had become an act of conscience.
Moving seamlessly through centuries of war and dissidence, A Lethal Obsession powerfully portrays the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the fateful anti-Semitic tract commissioned by Russia�s tsarist secret police at the end of the nineteenth century�and the prediction by Theodor Herzl, Austrian founder of political Zionism, of eventual disaster for the Jews in Europe.
The twentieth century fulfilled this dark prophecy, with the horrifying ascent of Hitler�s Third Reich. Yet, as Wistrich disturbingly suggests, the end of World War II failed to neutralize the �Judeophobic virus�: Pogroms and prejudice continued in Soviet-controlled territories and in the Arab-Muslim world that would fan flames for new decades of distrust, malice, and violence. Here, in pointed and devastating detail, is our own world, one in which jihadi terrorists and the radical left blame Israel for all global ills. In his concluding chapters, Wistrich warns of a possible nuclear �Final Solution� at the hands of Iran, a land in which a formerly prosperous Jewish community has declined in both fortunes and freedoms.
Dazzling in scope and erudition, A Lethal Obsession is a riveting masterwork of investigative nonfiction, the definitive work on this unsettling yet essential subject. It is destined to become an indispensable source for any student of world affairs.
Robert S. Wistrich is professor of modern European history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and head of its Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Previously, he held the Jewish Chronicle Chair of Jewish Studies at University College London and was visiting professor of history at Brandeis and Harvard universities. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, he is the author of many books, including Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, and scripted the PBS television series of the same name.
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The Forty Years War
The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama
By Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman.
January 2010, Harper
PW writes: Neoconservative ideologues battle pragmatists by fair means and foul in this scattershot history of American foreign policy. Colodny (Silent Coup) and Shachtman (Decade) hang their study on the figure of Fritz Kraemer, an obscure Pentagon analyst, whose championing of a militarized, moralistic foreign policy allegedly inspired two generations of neoconservatives. The book�s first half follows the departure of Richard Nixon and erstwhile Kraemer-ite Henry Kissinger from conservative orthodoxy in seeking a rapprochement with Communist powers. In a voluminous rehash of Watergate, the authors insinuate that White House chief of staff and Kraemer prot�g� Alexander Haig, abetted by reporter Bob Woodward (a sinister �mouthpiece�), undermined the Nixon presidency for this apostasy. The second half treats ensuing decades as a seesaw struggle in which neocon policy makers� adventurism, from the Iran-Contra affair to the Iraq War, periodically self-destructs and generates a realist backlash. The authors� sharp narrative of factional infighting exhausts itself in flogging the Haig-Woodward conspiracy theory. Kraemer is an ill-chosen central character, more figurehead than intellectual godfather; his sketchily elaborated ideas shed little light on this serviceable but mundane account of the conflict between hawks and doves
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THE BELIEVERS
A NOVEL. Now in paperback.
BY ZOE HELLER
January 2010, Harper
Publishers Weekly. Starred Review. Heller (What Was She Thinking?; Notes on a Scandal) puts to pointed use her acute observations of human nature in her third novel, a satire of 1960s idealism soured in the early 21st century. Audrey and Joel Litvinoff have attempted to pass on to their children their lefty passions�despite Audrey's decidedly bourgeois attitude and attorney Joel's self-satisfied heroism, including the defense of a suspected terrorist in 2002 New York City. When Joel has a stroke and falls into a coma, Audrey grows increasingly nasty as his secrets surface. The children, meanwhile, wander off on their own adventures: Rosa's inherited principles are beleaguered by the unpleasant realities of her work with troubled adolescents; Karla, her self-image crushed by Audrey, has settled into an uncomfortable marriage and the accompanying pressure to have children; and adopted Lenny, the best metaphor for the family's troubles, dawdles along as a drug addict and master manipulator. Though some may be initially put off by the characters' coldness�the Litvinoffs are a severely screwed-up crew�readers with a certain mindset will have a blast watching things get worse
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LOX, STOCKS, AND BACKSTAGE BROADWAY
ICONIIC TRADES OF NEW YORK CITY
BY NANCY GRACE
January 2010, Rowman & Littlefield
From Publishers Weekly. Starred Review. Profiling those who craft the artistry of Broadway, pilot NYC subway trains, construct the city's ubiquitous water towers, plaster Manhattan walls with graffiti, and more, this compendium of big city trade from Library of Congress "folklike specialist" Groce is packed with the fascinating testimony of cityfolk who honestly love what they do. The process of making a wig for a Broadway show, detailed by designer Linda Rice, involves thousands of individual hairs hand-tied to mesh, taking some 15 hours to complete and a minimum of $1,200. The graffiti industry is well-considered some three decades after it emerged as a cultural force, and the everyday frustrations of riding the MTA's subway system are put into startling perspective: "Approximately 70 percent of Americans who ride mass transit each day do so in New York City." Groce also demystifies Wall Street with the help of traders and others, and serves up everything there is to know about Bagels and Bialys on Coney Island: the third-generation owner of Russ and Daughters says that the present-day variety of shmears (like tofu cream cheese) and fish ("I have ten different kinds of smoked salmon") would make grandfather roll over in his grave. A grand undertaking, Groce's volume makes an absorbing document of "local culture in the global city."
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FDR�s DEADLY SECRET
By Eric Fettmann and Steven Lamaze
January 2010, Publicaffairs
What would have happened if FDR lived to complete his fourth term. What would have happened to Europe, Japan, the Atom Bomb, USSR, and Germany. What if people knew that FDR was dying? Who would have received the nomination and won the presidency and what would his policies have been?
In 1970, Roosevelt�s cardiologist admitted he had been suffering from uncontrolled hypertension and that his death�from a cerebral hemorrhage�was �a cataclysmic event waiting to happen.� But even this was a carefully constructed deceit, one that began in the 1930s and became acutely necessary as America approached war.
In this great medical detective story and narrative of a presidential cover-up, an exhaustive study of all available reports of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt�s health, and a comprehensive review of thousands of photographs, an intrepid physician-journalist team reveals that Roosevelt at his death suffered from melanoma, a skin cancer that had spread to his brain and abdomen. Roosevelt�s condition was not only physically disabling, but also could have affected substantially his mental function and his ability to make decisions in the days when the nation was imperiled by World War II.
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THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB
How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America
BY DON LATTIN
January 2010, HarperCollins
The Harvard Psychedelic Club is not only a great read, it's also an unforgettable head trip. Lattin weaves a masterful tale of 1960s-style spirituality, professional jealousy, and out-of-body experiences. Lattin has done his homework and it shows. Read this book and expand your mind. No hallucinogenics required. (Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss) A revealing account of four iconic personalities who helped define an era, sowed seeds of consciousness, and left indelible marks in the lives of spiritual explorers to this day. The Conclusion is alone worth the price of the book. (Dan Millman, author of The Peaceful Warrior) With care and considerable humor, Don Lattin shows us how the interwoven relationships of four charismatic visionaries contributed to the expansion of mind that changed American culture forever. The way we eat, pray, and love have all been conditioned by their lives and teachings. (Mirabai Bush, co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, co-author (with Ram Dass) of Compassion in Action). Lattin's focuses on Huston Smith and Andrew Weil as well as Leary and Alpert. He creates a stimulating and engrossing read.
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The Death of the Shtetl
By Yehuda Bauer
January 2010, Yale
In this book, Yehuda Bauer, an internationally acclaimed Holocaust historian, describes the destruction of small Jewish townships, the shtetls, in what was the eastern �part of Poland by the Nazis in 1941�1942. Bauer brings together all available documents, testimonies, and scholarship, including previously unpublished material from the Yad Vashem archives, pertaining to nine representative shtetls. In line with his belief that �history is the story of real people in real situations,� Bauer tells moving stories about what happened to individual Jews and their communities. Over a million people, approximately a quarter of all victims of the Holocaust, came from the �shtetls. Bauer writes of the relations between Jews and non-Jews (including the actions of rescuers); he also describes attempts to create underground resistance groups, efforts to escape to the forests, and Jewish participation in the Soviet partisan movement. Bauer�s book is a definitive examination of the demise of the shtetls, a topic of vast importance to the history of the Holocaust.
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CAPITALISM AND THE JEWS
BY JERRY Z. MuLLER
January 2010, Princeton
The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent. Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, Capitalism and the Jews examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, Capitalism and the Jews will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own.
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A TALE OF TWO SEDERS
By Mindy Avra Portnoy (Author), Valeria Cis (Illustrator)
January 2010, Kar-Ben
Ages 4 - 8
Divorce is difficult. But over Passover, the child celebrates with both parents, one each night. Over the course of three years and six seders, we watch as a young girl comes to grips with her new family situation as she and her parents forge new lives and create new family traditions. Click the book cover to read more.

GOING ON A HAMETZ HUNT
BY JACQUELINE JULES AND RICK BROWN
2010, Kar-Ben
Ages 1 - 4
Join as a brother and sister search out hametz as they seek out breadcrumbs before the start of pAssover, rhyming and counting as they go. . Click the book cover to read more.

FEBRUARY 2010

YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY SHUT UP
A LOVE STORY
By Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn
February 2010, Crown
"We're just not that into us."--Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn
Annabelle and Jeff have been married 13 years, like a marriage bar mitzvah. They have stayed together by ignoring conventional wisdom. They compete as to who is a better parent, they avoid intimacy, they are couples therapy dropouts. This is a he said - she said chronicle of their marriage. Perfect for Valentines Day? Gurwitch is the co host of DINNER AND A MOVIE on TBS, and appears on NPR. Kehn won an Emmy as a writer of the Ben Stiller Show. He is also an actor who was in Tropic Thunder and Entourage (as a clown) and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Best line is:
Jeff: I want to have sex everday, but Annabelle wants to do it only once a week. So we compromise: we have sex once a week.
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THE 188TH CRYBABY BRIGADE
A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah
A Memoir
BY JOEL CHASNOFF
February 2010, Free Press
Look at me. Do you see me? Do you see me in my olive-green uniform, beret, and shiny black boots? Do you see the assault rifle slung across my chest? Finally! I am the badass Israeli soldier at the side of the road, in sunglasses, forearms like bricks. And honestly -- have you ever seen anything quite like me? Joel Chasnoff is twenty-four years old, an American, and the graduate of an Ivy League university. But when his career as a stand-up comic fails to get off the ground, Chasnoff decides it's time for a serious change of pace. Leaving behind his amenity-laden Brooklyn apartment for a plane ticket to Israel, Joel trades in the comforts of being a stereotypical American Jewish male for an Uzi, dog tags (with his name misspelled), and serious mental and physical abuse at the hands of the Israeli Army. The 188th Crybaby Brigade is a hilarious and poignant account of Chasnoff's year in the Israel Defense Forces -- a year that he volunteered for, and that he'll never get back. As a member of the 188th Armored Brigade, a unit trained on the Merkava tanks that make up the backbone of Israeli ground forces, Chasnoff finds himself caught in a twilight zone-like world of mandatory snack breaks, battalion sing-alongs, and eighteen-year-old Israeli mama's boys who feign injuries to get out of guard duty and claim diarrhea to avoid kitchen work. More time is spent arguing over how to roll a sleeve cuff than studying the mechanics of the Merkava tanks. The platoon sergeants are barely older than the soldiers and are younger than Chasnoff himself. By the time he's sent to Lebanon for a tour of duty against Hezbollah, Chasnoff knows everything about why snot dries out in the desert, yet has never been trained in firing the MAG. And all this while his relationship with his tough-as-nails Israeli girlfriend (herself a former drill sergeant) crumbles before his very eyes. The lone American in a platoon of eighteen-year-old Israelis, Chasnoff takes readers into the barracks; over, under, and through political fences; and face-to-face with the absurd reality of life in the Israeli Army. It is a brash and gritty depiction of combat, rife with ego clashes, breakdowns in morale, training mishaps that almost cost lives, and the barely containable sexual urges of a group of teenagers. What's more, it's an on-the-ground account of life in one of the most em-battled armies on earth -- an occupying force in a hostile land, surrounded by enemy governments and terrorists, reviled by much of the world. With equal parts irreverence and vulnerability, irony and intimacy, Chasnoff narrates a new kind of coming-of-age story -- one that teaches us, moves us, and makes us laugh.
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A WALL IN PALESTINE
BY RENE BACKMANN
Translated from the French by A. Kasier
February 2010, Picador
Rene Backman is the Editor in Chief of Le Nouvel Observateur�s foreign desk, and received the Prix Mumm. Backmann writes that the barrier wall will be completed in 2010. It may redraw the property lines between Israel and the West Back of the Jordan for years to come. Backmann writes that Israel refers to it is the security wall, and Palestinians refer to it as the apartheid wall. Backmann has interviewed Israeli policy makers, politicians and military officers, as well as local Palestinians living in the West Bank of the Jordan. He then draws conclusions on it effectiveness, purpose and possible consequences. Is is an endgame and will it occlude the possibility of peace for generations to come?
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ISRAEL�S BARGAIN WITH THE BOMB
DEMOCRACY, SECRECY, AND TABOO
By AVNER COHEN (GWU)
February 2010, Columbia University Press
Israel has made a unique contribution to the nuclear age& mdash;it has created (with the tacit support of the United States) a special "bargain" with its bomb. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state that keeps its bomb invisible, unacknowledged, opaque. It will only say that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. The bomb is Israel's collective ineffable - the nation's last taboo. This bargain has a name: in Hebrew, it is called amimut, or opacity. By adhering to the bargain, which was born in a secret deal between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir, Israel creates a code of nuclear conduct that encompasses both governmental policy and societal behavior. The bargain lowers the salience of Israel's nuclear weapons, yet it also remains incompatible with the norms and values of liberal democracy. It relies on secrecy and opacity. It infringes on the public right to know and negates the notion of public accountability and oversight, among other offenses. Author of the critically acclaimed Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen offers a bold and original study of this politically explosive subject. Along with a fair appraisal of the bargain's strategic merits, Cohen provides a critique of its antidemocratic faults. Arguing that the bargain has become increasingly anachronistic, he calls for a reform in line with domestic democratic values as well as current international nuclear norms. Most important, he believes the old methods will prove inadequate in dealing with a nuclear Iran. Cohen concludes with fresh perspectives on Iran, Israel, and the effort toward global disarmament
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WE CAN HAVE PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND
A PLAN THAT WILL WORK
BY JiMMY CARTER
February 2010, Paperback edition Simon and Schuster
Carter�s treatise now in paperback. And just in time for its publication, he has publicly asked the Jewish community for forgiveness. Click the book cover to read more.

MAKING TOAST
A FAMILY STORY
BY ROGER ROSENBLATT
February 2010, Ecco
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Rosenblatt made toast the way he constructs a sentence. With great strength. His daughter Amy Rosenblatt Solomon, a gifted physician in Chevy Chase, died suddenly at the age of 38. So Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, Left Quogue and took over her duties to help to raise her three young children along with Amy�s now widowed husband and their son in law, Dr. Harrison Solomon. With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. He learns more about parenting with his grandkids than he did with his own three kids. The day Amy died, Harris told Virginia and Roger, �It�s impossible.� Rosenblatt�s story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible. Roger Rosenblatt's contributions to Time and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody, and an Emmy. He is the author of six Off-Broadway plays and twelve books, including Lapham Rising.

THE FOURTH ASSASSIN
A MYSTERY NOVEL
BY MATT BEYNON REES
February 2010, SoHo House
From the former Jerusalem Bureau Chief of Time Magazine. Arriving to visit his youngest son, Ala, in a heavily Palestinian area of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Omar Yussef discovers the beheaded body of one of the boy's roommates. Initially he thinks the dead boy is his son. When when Ala refuses to give an alibi, he is arrested as a suspect. Omar Yussef must prove his son's innocence, and the clues lead to the Assassins, a club Ala had in high school which took its name from the the medieval Shiite sect of murderers. Click the book cover to read more.

FLY FISHING WITH DARTH VADER
AND OTHER ADVENTURES WITH EVANGELICAL WRESTLERS, POLITICAL HITMEN, AND JEWISH COWBOYS
BY MATT LABASH
February 2010, Simon & Schuster
In this debut collection, beloved journalist Matt Labash chronicles the outsized and outrageous characters who populate America's murky periphery. Filled with wit insight and a trenchant grasp of the American scoundrel. Profiles of Pirate Kingfish Governor Edwin Edwards, Crackhead Marion Barry, Political dirty tricks king Roger Stone, and much more
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The Three Weissmanns of Westport
The Three Weissmans of Westport
A Novel
By Cathleen Schine
February 2010, FS&G
Jane Austen�s beloved �Sense and Sensibility� has moved to Westport, Connecticut, in this enchanting modern-day homage to the classic novel. �When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy eight years old and she was seventy-five . . . He said the words �Irreconcilable differences,� and saw real confusion in his wife�s eyes. �Irreconcilable differences?� she said. �Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce?� �
Thus begins The Three Weissmanns of Westport, a sparkling contemporary adaptation of Sense and Sensibility from the always winning Cathleen Schine, who has already been crowned �a modern-day Jewish Jane Austen� by People�s Leah Rozen.
In Schine�s story, sisters Miranda, an impulsive but successful literary agent, and Annie, a pragmatic library director, quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly fifty years and then exiled from their elegant New York apartment by his mistress, Betty is forced to move to a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who dutifully comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister. As the sisters mingle with the suburban aristocracy, love starts to blossom for both of them, and they find themselves struggling with the dueling demands of reason and romance.
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DEVOTION
A MEMOIR
BY DANI SHAPIRO
February 2010, Harper. DaniShapiro.Com
How many women write a memoir? And how many live enough to write two memoirs before they are 50? Dani Shapiro is one of these writers. She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. But it was more about tradition than belief, and she felt an emptiness that she filled with many things� That was her first memoir. Now she is breaking forty, and she has a marriage and a child and is in Litchfield CT. This is not the burbs, but the country. She lives a few hours from Manhattan, but it might as well be a five hour flight. She settles into being a Mommy (and perhaps a mom), a wife, and a daughter and a neighbor. She is finally coming of age. This book is her reckoning of what she has learned the hard way and what she believes. WHAT DOES SHE BELIEVE? This keeps her awake at night. Is there a plan, an order, some wisdom? Is it chaos? Is life just a jumble of events? This book took two years of introspection to create. Click the book cover to read more.

SEX LOVE AND MONEY
REVENGE AND RUIN NIN THE WORLD OF HIGH STAKES DIVORCE
BY ATTY GERALD NISSENBAUM and John Sedgwick
February 2010, Hudson Street
In this memoir, one of the nation's best divorce lawyers opens decades of case files, exposing salacious stories that make fiction jealous. We all know the stereotypes of divorce: the cheating husband, the financially and emotionally broke wife. But after handling fighting spouses for nearly forty years, attorney Gerald Nissenbaum knows that the truth is even more outrageous and extraordinary than the characters on soap operas or courtroom reality TV. From a money-hungry wife who emptied the entire house-from furniture to the light fixtures-before leaving her husband penniless; to a revenge-obsessed husband who delivered truckloads of documents to his wife trying to deceive her, Nissenbaum shares the best tales from his extensive, successful career. Commanding upwards of $700 per hour, he knows everything about his well-to-do clients: how much is in his bank account; what kind of sex she likes and how often; if they marred for money or power; how he cheated and with whom. Based on the three elements that hold a marriage together and ultimately tear many apart, Sex, Love and Money examines the darkly humorous, ironic, cathartic, vindictive, sad and simply astonishing situations people go through to break asunder what a wedding put together.
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From the Four Winds
A NOVEL
BY Haim Sabato
Translated form Hebrew>BR> February 2010, Toby press
Haim Sabato draws us into his childhood with this evocative rendering of his experiences as a young boy whose family immigrates to Israel in the 1950's, settling in a Ma'abara - a transit camp. He notices his fellow immigrants' concealment of their pasts. He accepts this secrecy, sensing that everything will reveal itself eventually. And this revelation does come, in the form of Farkash, a mysterious, dynamic man who takes Haim under his wing and gradually divulges to him his sorrowful, uplifting story, one that profoundly impacts Haim for the rest of his life...
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YOU COULDN�T IGNORE ME IF YOU TRIED
THE BRAT PACK, JOHN HUGHES, AND THEIR IMPACT ON A GENERATION
BY SuSANNAH GORA
SusannahGora.com
February 2010, Random House Crown
Gora has wanted to write this book for over a decade. It was bashert.
From Publishers Weekly: The phrase was coined by David Blum in the headline Hollywood's Brat Pack, heralding his cover story for the June 10, 1985, issue of New York magazine with its cover photo of Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson. The label stuck, Gora notes, and extended to describe other actors: Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall. A former editor at Premiere, Gora guides the reader through the creation of the teen cinema of the 1980s, described by the American Film Institute as the cultural phenomenon which helped make us what we are today. To recall the era, she interviewed two dozen actors, plus the directors and producers behind the Brat Pack's memorable movies, including The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. As Gora sees it, The films changed the way many young people looked at everything from class distinction to friendship, from love and sex to fashion and music. Writer-director John Hughes's ability to capture adolescent angst is highlighted. The 1980s youth films maintain their popularity on TV and DVDs, and Gora gives them near-encyclopedic, comprehensive coverage.
She pretty much interviewed every actor, actress, producer and director of the period and those films, plus she throws in what happened behind the scenes between the takes. She was an Associate Editor for Premiere.
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When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother
By Melissa Broder
February 2010, Ampersand
Who's the queen of kundalini bloopers, Emily Dickinson's attitude problem (that bitch) and California dreams? It's Melissa Broder, who will charm your pants off and then show you a little tough love in this vivid, witty first collection of poems: Each poem is artisan-crafted in controlled couplets, weighty triplets, tight syllabics and assonance that will take the top of your head off. But you won't have time to absorb the academic monkeyshine so absorbed you'll be in the flip side of Bat Mitzvah stress-syndrome, Aunt Sheila's in Taos, vampires in absentia, and brand names, brand names, brand names. From junkie fetishism to a housewife with a special thing for laundry, Broder does dark with magnetic charisma and enchanting humor.
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Skeletons at the Feast
A Novel (Paperback)
BY Chris Bohjalian
February 2010, Three Rivers
In his 12th novel, Bohjalian (The Double Bind) paints the brutal landscape of Nazi Germany as German refugees struggle westward ahead of the advancing Russian army. Inspired by the unpublished diary of a Prussian woman who fled west in 1945, the novel exhumes the ruin of spirit, flesh and faith that accompanied thousands of such desperate journeys. Prussian aristocrat Rolf Emmerich and his two elder sons are sent into battle, while his wife flees with their other children and a Scottish POW who has been working on their estate. Before long, they meet up with Uri Singer, a Jewish escapee from an Auschwitz-bound train, who becomes the group's protector. In a parallel story line, hundreds of Jewish women shuffle west on a gruesome death march from a concentration camp. Bohjalian presents the difficulties confronting both sets of travelers with carefully researched detail and an unflinching eye, but he blinks when creating the Emmerichs, painting them as untainted by either their privileged status, their indoctrination by the Nazi Party or their adoration of Hitler. Although most of the characters lack complexity, Bohjalian's well-chosen descriptions capture the anguish of a tragic era and the dehumanizing desolation wrought by war.
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BETWEEN TERROR AND TOURISM
AN OVERLAND JOURNEY ACROSS NORTH AFRICA
BY MICHAEL MEWSHAW
February 2010, COunterpoint
For his 65th birthday, novelist Michael Mewshaw took a 4,000-mile overland trip across North Africa. Arriving in Egypt during food riots, he heads west into Libya, where billions in oil money have produced little except citizens eager to flee to Europe or join the jihad in Iraq. In Tunis, Mewshaw visits an abandoned Star Wars movie set where Al Qaeda has just kidnapped two tourists. Ignoring U.S. Embassy warnings he crosses into Algeria, traveling through mountain towns and seething metropolises where 200,000 people have died during more than a decade of sectarian violence. Searching for the tombs of seven monks murdered by Islamic fundamentalists, he reaches a village where six more people have been beheaded the day before. When he interviews a repentant terrorist responsible for 5,000 deaths, the man praises the Boy Scouts for training him. By contrast, the Moroccan city of Tangier seems almost tame. But then he meets the last literary prot�g� of Paul Bowles who accuses Bowles of plagiarism and murder. In the end, the reader, like the author, is immersed in a fascinating adventure that�s sometimes tragic, often funny, occasionally terrifying and always a revelation of a strange place and its people.
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Assume you are planning a quick trip to Iran, maybe to scout it out, perhaps to blow up some nuclear missile building sites. Why not do some touring while you are there:

Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard
A Journey Through The Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan
BY Nicholas Jubber
2010, Da Capo
An engrossing blend of travel writing and history, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah�s Beard traces one man�s adventure-filled journey through today�s Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and describes his remarkable attempt to make sense of the present by delving into the past. Setting out to gain insight into the lives of Iranians and Afghans today, Nicholas Jubber is surprised to uncover the legacy of a vibrant pre-Islamic Persian culture that has endured even in times of the most fanatic religious fundamentalism. Everywhere�from underground dance parties to religious shrines to opium dens�he finds powerful and unbreakable connections to a time when both Iran and Afghanistan were part of the same mighty empire, when the flame of Persian culture lit up the world. Whether through his encounters with poets and cab drivers or run-ins with �pleasure daughters� and mujahideen, again and again Jubber is drawn back to the eleventh-century Persian epic, the Shahnameh (�Book of Kings�). The poem becomes not only his window into the region�s past, but also his link to its tumultuous present, and through it Jubber gains access to an Iran and Afghanistan seldom revealed or depicted: inside-out worlds in which he has tea with a warlord, is taught how to walk like an Afghan, and even discovers, on a night full of bootleg alcohol and dancing, what it means to drink arak off an Ayatollah�s beard.
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Since the ads in the JewishWeek and The Forward or HEEB are lacking, you can depend on the London Review of Books for creativity.

SEXUALLY I�M MORE OF A SWITZERLAND
MORE PERSONAL ADS FROM THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
Edited by DAVID ROSE
February 2010, Scribner
In Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland, author David Rose shares a collection of humorous personal ads, and gives readers a laugh-out-loud look at what some people will post to get a shot at love.
Nothing says "I love you" in a more sincere way than being woken with champagne and pastries and roses. Apart from a dog with peanut butter on the roof of his mouth. Write, we'll meet, sleep together and--in the morning, just before my friend's wife tells me to get off their sofa and get out of their house--I'll show you Winston's trick. It's hilarious. You'll have to bring the peanut butter though--they've put locks on all the kitchen cupboards. Man, 26. Box no. 6433.
I cannot guarantee you'll fall in love with me, but I can promise you the best home-brewed beetroot wine you�ll have ever tasted. Now if that doesn't sound like a fermented bucket of yummy siphoned lustiness I just don't know what does. Man, 41. Stupid like wow! Box no. 9851.
Tall, handsome, well-built, articulate, intelligent, sensitive, yet often grossly inaccurate man, 21. Cynics (and some cheap Brentwood psychiatrists) may say 'pathological liar', but I like to use 'creative with reality'. Join me in my 36-bedroomed mansion on my Gloucestershire estate, set in 400 acres of wild-stag populated woodland. East Ham.12 Box no. 0620
If intense, post-fight sex scares you, I�m not the woman for you (amateur big-boned cage wrestler, 62). Box no.
My last seven adverts in this column were influenced by the early catalogue of Krautrock band, Paternoster. This one, however, is based entirely around the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Man, 32. Possibly the last person you want to be stood next to at a house-party you�ve been dragged along to by a friend who wants to get off with the flatmate of the guy whose birthday it is. Hey! Have you ever heard Boards of Canada? They�re amazing; I�ll burn you a CD.9 Box no. 3178.
22 Sexually, I�m More of a Switzerland
This advert is about as close as I come to meaningful interaction with other adults. Woman, 51. Not good at parties but tremendous breasts. Box no. 5436.
Years of cigarette smoke can put one hell of a patina on a guy�s complexion. F with hot soapy water, coarse brush and a poor sense of smell/sobriety required by jug-faced M, 57. Box no. 4674.MBR> Click the book cover to read more.

Government Girl
Young and Female in the White House
By Stacy Parker Aab
2010, Ecco paperback
I admit that I was sad in the first chapter of this book, when the author is abroad with the President, no longer working the White House, but volunteering to head up the hotel arrangements. President Clinton is alone with her in the hotel room, he invites her out to the balcony. A lone Japanese naval ship is in the Sea, probably snapping photos of Clinton and this female figure on a balcony. And then . . .
This is a memoir of being young and female in the Clinton White House. Stacy Parker Aab was born in Detroit in 1974, the only daughter of a white Kansas farm girl and a young black Detroiter fresh from two tours of Vietnam. An excellent student, Aab gravitated toward public service and moved to Washington, D.C., for college in 1992. She scored an internship in the White House. For three years, she worked for George Stephanopoulos. In 1997 she became White House staff, serving as Paul Begala's special assistant. At first, life was charmed, with nurturing mentors, (men such as Vernon Jordan), superstar politicos, and handsome Secret Service agents. In January 1998, the world of the Clinton White House changed radically. Monica Lewinsky became a household name, and Aab learned quickly that in Washington, protectors can become predators, investigators will chase you like prey, and if you make mistakes with a powerful man, the world will turn your name into mud. This memoir is a window into the culture of the Clinton White House, as seen through the eyes of an idealistic young female aide. Stacy Parker Aab's intimate memoir tells of her coming-of-age in the lion's den. Her story provides a searing look at the dynamics between smart young women and the influential older men who often hold the keys to their dreams.
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MARCH 2010 BOOKS

YEHUDA HALEVI
By HILLEL HALKIN
March 2010, Schocken
A masterful biography of Yehuda Halevi, poet laureate of the Jewish people and a shining example of the synthesis of religion and culture that defined the golden age of Spanish Jewry. Like Maimonides, with whom he is often contrasted, Yehuda Halevi spanned multiple worlds. Poet, physician, and philosopher, Halevi is as well known today for poetry that is taught to schoolchildren and has become part of the Jewish liturgy, as he is for The Kuzari, one of the most important works of Jewish philosophy ever published. Hillel Halkin brilliantly evokes the fascinating world of eleventh- and twelfth-century Andalusian Spain and discusses the tangle of religious and cultural influences�Christian, Muslim, and Jewish�that formed Halevi. And he pieces together the mysterious fragments of Halevi�s last days and his final, fateful voyage to Palestine. An acclaimed writer and translator, Halkin intersperses his account of Halevi�s life and tragic death with excerpts from his poems and a magnificent analysis of them. He also places Halevi�s philosophic writings within the larger context of Jewish thought, analyzes his rediscovery by Heinrich Heine and other members of the nineteenth-century German-Jewish intelligentsia, and provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing debate over Halevi�s legacy as a Zionist visionary.
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The Living Fire
Poems
By Edward Hirsch
March 2010, Knopf
A rich and significant collection of more than one hundred poems, drawn from a lifetime of �wild gratitude� in poetry. In poems chronicling insomnia (�the blue-rimmed edge / of outer dark, those crossroads / where we meet the dead�), art and culture (poems on Edward Hopper and Paul Celan, love poems in the voices of Baudelaire and Gertrude Stein, a meditation on two suitcases of children�s drawings that came out of the Terezin concentration camp), and his own experience, including the powerful, frank self-examinations in his more recent work, Edward Hirsch displays stunning range and quality. Repeatedly confronting the darkness, his own sense of godlessness (�Forgive me, faith, for never having any�), he also struggles with the unlikely presence of the divine, the power of art to redeem human transience, and the complexity of relationships. Throughout the collection, his own life trajectory enriches the poems; he is the �skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library,� as well as the passionate middle-aged man who tells his lover, �I wish I could paint you� / . . . / I need a brush for your hard angles / and ferocious blues and reds. / . . . / I wish I could paint you / from the waist down.�
Grieving for the losses occasioned by our mortality, Hirsch�s ultimate impulse as a poet is to praise�to wreathe himself, as he writes, in �the living fire� that burns with a ferocious intensity.
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TO HAVE NOT
A MEMOIR
BY FRANCES LEFKOWITZ
March 2010, McAdam Cage
Imagine sitting in a car as a kid, and watching your mother negotiate with a movie theater for discounted tickets. Sticks in your head.
Poverty has many guises: a lack of money, of course, but it can also be a lack of love or choice, pleasure or safety, faith or confidence or possibility. Poverty seeps into the soul and deadens the spirit. In To Have Not, Frances Lefkowitz reflects on her own life of poverties. A poor white girl from 1970s San Francisco, Lefkowitz tries to escape her upbringing through an Ivy League scholarship, only to realize that upward mobility is not all it�s cracked up to be: being a Have Not and not having aren�t necessarily the same thing. Crashing headfirst into boundaries of class, race, and sex, Lefkowitz emerges scarred but whole, humor intact. To Have Not speaks to anyone who has ever battled the feeling of being cut off from the world�s abundance, and then settled, eventually, somewhere between resignation and appreciation for all they do have.
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THE HEBREW REPUBLIC
JEWISH SOURCES AND THE TANSFORMATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
BY ERIC NELSON
March 2010, Harvard University Press
According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization�the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book�s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson�s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light. Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.
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MOSES MONTEFIORE
JEWISH LIbERATOR, IMPErIAL HERO
BY ABIGAIL GREEN
March 2010, Harvard University Press
Humanitarian, philanthropist, and campaigner for Jewish emancipation on a grand scale, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784�1885) was the preeminent Jewish figure of the nineteenth century�and one of the first truly global celebrities. His story, told here in full for the first time, is a remarkable and illuminating tale of diplomacy and adventure. Abigail Green's sweeping biography follows Montefiore through the realms of court and ghetto, tsar and sultan, synagogue and stock exchange. Interweaving the public triumph of Montefiore's foreign missions with the private tragedy of his childless marriage, this book brings the diversity of nineteenth-century Jewry brilliantly to life�from London to Jerusalem, Rome to St. Petersburg, Morocco to Istanbul. Here we see the origins of Zionism and the rise of international Jewish consciousness, the faltering birth of international human rights, and the making of the modern Middle East. With the globalization and mobilization of religious identities now at the top of the political agenda, Montefiore's life story is relevant as never before. Mining materials from eleven countries in nine languages, Green's masterly biography bridges the East-West divide in modern Jewish history, presenting the transformation of Jewish life in Europe, the Middle East, and the New World as part of a single global phenomenon. As it reestablishes Montefiore's status as a major historical player, it also restores a significant chapter to the history of our modern world.
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GREECE - A JEWISH HISTORY
NOW IN PAPERBACK
BY K E FLEMING
March 2010, Princeton
K. E. Fleming's Greece--a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis. For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece--a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece--as deportees to Auschwitz or �migr�s to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common. Click the book cover to read more.

Mornings in Jenin
A Novel
By Susan Abulhawa
February 2010, Bloomsbury
COVER BLURB: heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that could do for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.
The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch's bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal�s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.
Previously published in a hardcover edition with a limited run under the title The SCar of David, this powerful novel is now available in a fully revised, newly titled paperback edition. The deep and moving humanity of Mornings in Jenin forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes.
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BLOOMS OF DARKNESS
A NOVEL
BY AHARON APPELFELD. Translated from Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
March 2010, Schocken
A new novel from the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli writer (�One of the greatest writers of the age��The Guardian), a haunting, heartbreaking story of love and loss. The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she battles with the Nazi soldiers who come and go. When she�s not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo becomes protective of Mariana, too, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana. And as her life spirals downward, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood. The arrival of the Russian army sends the prostitutes fleeing. But Mariana is too well known, and she is arrested as a Nazi collaborator for having slept with the Germans. As the novel moves toward its heartrending conclusion, Aharon Appelfeld once again crafts out of the depths of unfathomable tragedy a renewal of life and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Click the book cover to read more.

BACKING NITO FORWARD
A MEMOIR
BY JULES FEIFFER
March 2010, Doubleday
The award-winning cartoonist, playwright, and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. A gifted storyteller who has delighted readers and theater audiences for decades, Jules Feiffer now turns his talents to the tale of his own life. Plagued by learning problems, a domineering mother, and a debilitating sense of fear, Feiffer embarked on his first cartoon apprenticeship at the age of seventeen, emboldened only by a passion for success and a fortitude for failure. He vividly recalls those transformative years working under the legendary Will Eisner, and later, after he was drafted into the army, his transformation from �smart-ass kid into an enraged satirist.� Backing into Forward also traces Feiffer's love life, from a doomed hitchhiking trip to reclaim his high-school sweetheart to losing his virginity in Greenwich Village and his road to marriage and fatherhood. At the center of this journey is Feiffer's prolific creativity. In dazzling detail, he recounts the birth of his subversive graphic novella Munro, his entr�e into New York's literary salons in the 1960s, collaborations with film greats Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, and Jack Nicholson, and other major turning points. Brimming with wry punch lines, slices of Americana, and pithy social commentary, Backing into Forward charts Feiffer's rise to fame from unlikely beginnings.. Click the book cover to read more.

THE SABBATH WORLD
GLIMPSES OF A DIFFERENT ORDER OF TIME
BY JUDITH SHULEVITZ
March 2010, Random House
Perhaps not since Heschel's The Sabbath, has an author presented a simple deeply informative narrative on the meaning of rest and the Sabbath. Click the book cover to read more.

The Liberators
America's Witnesses to the Holocaust
by Michael Hirsh
March 2010, Bantam
Hirsh interviewed over 150 soldiers and six military nurses who happened upon Nazi death camps in the final weeks before WW2 ended. This is the story of these witnesses to the atrocities. In early Aprul 1945, the American 4th Armored Division was on the attack when a platoon found Ohrdruf, a slave labor sub-camp of Buchenwald. The the continuing weeks, more platoons found more camps. This book brings together their stories. Will be published on Holocaust Remembrance Day
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PEN OF IRON
AMERICAN PROSE AND THE KING JAMES BIBLE
By ROBERT ALTER (Berkeley Professor of Hebrew and Comp Lit)
March 2010, Princeton
The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven into Moby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sun Also Rises, Seize the Day, Gilead, and The Road, Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.
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BLOOD IRON AND GOLD
How The Railroads Transformed the World
By Christian Wolmar
March 2010, PublicAffairs
It was the railroad that transported the Jews to the death camps�
"Blood, Iron and Gold" tells the dramatic story of the people and events that shaped the world's railways, stimulating economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of a revolution in transportation. "Blood, Iron and Gold" reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navvies who endured horrific conditions to build this global network. Wolmar shows how the rise of the train stimulated daring feats of engineering, architectural innovation and the rapid movement of people and goods around the world. He shows how cultures were enriched - and destroyed - by the unrelenting construction and how they had a vital role in civil conflict, as well as in two world wars. Indeed, "Blood, Iron and Gold" reveals that the global expansion of the railways was key to the spread of modernity and the making of the modern world Click the book cover to read more.

THE GOOD AND EVIL SERPENT
HOW A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL BECAME CHRISTIANIZED
BY JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH
March 2010, Yale University Press
"Making use of his vast knowledge in archaeology and ancient literature, Professor Charlesworth has written an outstanding research on serpent symbolism, which is certainly to become the standard book of reference to this topic in the years to come."Mr. Adolfo Roitman, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The serpent had many meanings in antiquity. The Greeks and Romans saw it as positive. don�t forget the the symbol of medicine has a serpent in it The fertile Crescent gave meanings to it. There were rich varieties of meanings. In the Hebrew Bible, there was a fear and fascination feeling towards snakes. But in the New testament, it was seen as demonic (Chapter 6). In a perplexing passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus is likened to the most reviled creature in Christian symbology: the snake. Attempting to understand how the Fourth Evangelist could have made such a surprising analogy, James H. Charlesworth has spent nearly a decade combing through the vast array of references to serpents in the ancient world�from the Bible and other religious texts to ancient statuary and jewelry. Charlesworth has arrived at a surprising conclusion: not only was the serpent a widespread symbol throughout the world, but its meanings were both subtle and varied. In fact, the serpent of ancient times was more often associated with positive attributes like healing and eternal life than it was with negative meanings. This groundbreaking book explores in plentiful detail the symbol of the serpent from 40,000 BCE to the present, and from diverse regions in the world. In doing so it emphasizes the creativity of the biblical authors� use of symbols and argues that we must today reexamine our own archetypal conceptions with comparable creativity.
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HOW TO RETIRE OVERSEAS
BY KATHLEEN PEDDICORD
March 2010, Hudson Street
Will the new generation of Jewish people be moving to Florida as snowbirds?
Maybe
Or maybe they will read this book and end up in Buenos Aires, Nicaragua, Panama City, or KL(Malaysia) (probably not Israel hating Malaysia)
It's not just Florida anymore. This definitive step-by-step guide helps anyone to find, relocate, and save on a home away from home The effects of the economic downturn on IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement savings plans have forced thousands of people to rethink their plans for retirement. But Kathleen Peddicord offers a cheaper option with all the benefits of a stateside retirement: liv�ing overseas. Retiring abroad has never been more accessible or appealing. In addition to a sense of adventure, the allure of an idyllic locale, and the excitement of learning a new culture, Peddicord shows readers how living in an unconventional retirement destination can cost less than a traditional home in Arizona. This prescriptive guide answers every essential question potential ex-pats have, from instructions on setting up bank accounts to tips on locating great restaurants. Peddicord has more than twenty-five years of experience helping thousands of people successfully and happily relocate to the retirement of their dreams. From remote and relatively unknown havens like Nicaragua to well-traveled areas in Italy, How to Retire Overseas is the ultimate guide to retiring abroad.
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An Exclusive Love
Eine Exklusive Liebe
von Johanna Adorjan
Luchterhand LiteraturVerlag
In German
Will be translated and released by Norton in the USA in 2011
The story of the author�s paternal grandparents, who survived the Holocaust in Hungary, but recently committed suicide together in 1991 in Denmark. The author is a famous social commentator in modern Germany. They killed each other after learning that Istv�n (Pista) had terminal cancer. The early part of their relationship is dominated by the Nazi invasion of Hungary in March 1944, during which two-thirds of Hungary�s Jewish population were killed, many of them gunned down in mass shootings on the banks of the Danube. Pista, a surgeon, was deported to Muthausen concentration camp, and remained silent afterwards on what he may have been forced to do there. Then came their postwar lives in Communist-dominated Hungary. Adorjan considers the role her grandparents played in shaping her own identity, particularly in relation to questions of Jewishness and her own mixed German, Hungarian and Danish heritage. She remarks on how meticulously her grandparents planned their own deaths, and observes how many other victims of the camps also committed suicide. A powerful, reflective and thought-provoking work. Johanna Adorj�n, born in 1971 in Stockholm Sweden, now lives in Berlin Germany where she is a social commentator, playwright, and opera director. Since 2001 she has been the culture section editor of the Sunday Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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DINING WITH AL-QaEDA
THREE DECADES EXPLORING THE MANY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE EAST
BY HUGH POPE
March 2010, Thomas Dunne
The former WSJ reporter based in The Middle East reflects on the region�s history, the murder of Daniel Pearl, attitudes and mores, poetry and religion and food.
Of course he criticizes American support of Israel.
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MAKERS OF ANCIENT STRATEGY
FROM THE PERSIAN WARS TO THE FALL OF ROME
EDITED BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
March 2010, Princeton
In this prequel to the now-classic Makers of Modern Strategy, Victor Davis Hanson, a leading scholar of ancient military history, gathers prominent thinkers to explore key facets of warfare, strategy, and foreign policy in the Greco-Roman world. From the Persian Wars to the final defense of the Roman Empire, Makers of Ancient Strategy demonstrates that the military thinking and policies of the ancient Greeks and Romans remain surprisingly relevant for understanding conflict in the modern world. The book reveals that much of the organized violence witnessed today--such as counterterrorism, urban fighting, insurgencies, preemptive war, and ethnic cleansing--has ample precedent in the classical era. The book examines the preemption and unilateralism used to instill democracy during Epaminondas's great invasion of the Peloponnesus in 369 BC, as well as the counterinsurgency and terrorism that characterized Rome's battles with insurgents such as Spartacus, Mithridates, and the Cilician pirates. The collection looks at the urban warfare that became increasingly common as more battles were fought within city walls, and follows the careful tactical strategies of statesmen as diverse as Pericles, Demosthenes, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Caesar, and Augustus. Makers of Ancient Strategy shows how Greco-Roman history sheds light on wars of every age. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David L. Berkey, Adrian Goldsworthy, Peter J. Heather, Tom Holland, Donald Kagan, John W. I. Lee, Susan Mattern, Barry Strauss, and Ian Worthington. . Click the book cover to read more.

The Reluctant Spy
My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror
by John Kiriakou and Michael Ruby
March 2010, Bantam
The story of a 20 year career with the CIA, detailing operations, including the capture of Abu Zubaydah, and many cases of torture or �pressure.� A brutally honest accounts of waterboarding, as well as the unsung stranegths and successes of the CIA. Also stories of the agents he recruited in Greece to work in Arab countries
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AMERICAN TALIBAN
A Novel
By Pearl Abraham
April 2010, Random House
From the author of The Seventh Beggar and The Romance Reader, and for readers of Dutch, �Een Sterke Vrouw, Wie Zal Haar Vinden? (A Strong Woman, Who Can Find Her; an anthology of Jewish heroines in literature),� comes a novel about an ordinary young American drawn to the edges of terror
How could a seemingly ordinary American end up fighting against America in the war of terror? John Jude Parish is 6 feet tall, 19, and an avid surfer and skateboarder. His greatest hero is Richard Burton. No, not the actor, but the famed explorer. He chats online and meets a young woman from Brooklyn, an Arab woman who sparks his interest in Arab culture and Islam. He defers his acceptance to Brown University, and travels to Brooklyn, where he studies Arabic and Islam. More than studying it, he submits himself to Islam. John, like his hero, Burton, embarks on an exploraton. Like the American Transcendentatlists, Emerson, and Walt Whitman, he is on an exploration of America, himself, and religion, and ends up with the current enemy. How does a typical kids from an Upper Middle Class household end up involved in violent terrorism? Abraham attempts to lay out a riveting fictional yet intellectual story of how.
I admit that reading the first chapters were quite maddening since it seemed the author was forcefully dropping in current pop cultural indicators about John who drives a Saab and likes Chickabiddy for their colors� (�John walked from tent to sponsored tent, from Quicksilver to Roxy to Hurley to Billabong�� ), but the novel gets better as the story proceeds.
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CROSSING MENDELBAUM GATE
COMING OF AGE BETWEEN ARABS AND ISRAELIS
1956 - 1978
BY KAI BIRD
April 2010, Scribner
As Robert Oppenheimer used to toast people, �To The Confusion of Our Enemies!� Well, this book on face value confused me. What does a guy who live in Kathmandu, Nepal know about the Middle East? Kai Bird is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin (Is he a Naval navigator that I think I took a History class with at Penn?) of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005). So atomic history is a natural, but the Middle East? Well� don�t be confused.
In this book, Bird recounts growing up in the Middle East. He spent most of his childhood in the Arab world, but prior to now, as a journalist and historian, he has avoided the topic, it was a black hole, the kind that sucks in your emotions where it disappears in gravitational forces. But in 1991, Bird wrote a personal Op-Ed in The Washington Post, trying to convey his feelings about the region as it plunged into yet another war. His wife, a Jewish American, thought it was the best piece of writing he had ever done (listen to Jewish wives). She encouraged him to think about writing this memoir, which is so so much more difficult than writing a biography.
Bird grew up on the seam between Israeli Jews and Arab non Jews. It was the Jerusalem border between Jordan and Israel prior to 1967. That world is now gone. In 1956, prior to the Suez War, Kai Bird arrived in Jerusalem. He was only 4 years old and arrived with his family and father, who was a FSO in the US State Department. To get to school, young Kai was chauffeured through the Mandelbaum Gate (named for the house of the Byelorussian Jewish family that used to own it, it was the site in 1929 where the Haganah defended Jewish majority West Jerusalem during the riots and killings) each schoolday, which separated East Jerusalem from the Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem. Little did he know that he would spend his youth and adulthood on borders in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. Of course he was only 4 during the Suez War, but he recalls the 67 War, the Black September hijackings in 1970, the Jordanian Civil War, and the 1973 War. He knew Nasser, Kings Faisal and Khalid, Salem bin Laden, and King Hussein. His parents were sympathetic to Palestinian independence, and his wife is the child of two survivors of the Nazi death camps. Armed with all this baggage, he relates a spellbinding and informative memoir.
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LEO AND HIS CIRCLE
THE LIFE OF LEO CASTELLI
BY ANNIE COHEN-SOLAL
March 2010, Alfred Knopf
Leo Castelli, born Leo Krauss, reigned for decades as America�s most influential art dealer. Leo and His Circle is the story of his astonishing life and career. Arriving in New York in 1941, Castelli would not open a gallery until fifteen years later, at the age of fifty. But being first to exhibit the unknown Jasper Johns, Castelli emerged a tastemaker overnight and fast came to champion a virtual Who�s Who of twentieth-century masters: Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Twombly, among them. The secret of Leo�s success? Personal devotion to his �heroes�: putting young talents on stipend and cultivating careers by finding the ideal collection for each work rather than the top bidder, he transformed the way business was done. But Castelli had another secret too: his life as an Italian Jew. Annie Cohen-Solal traces a family whose fortunes rose and fell for centuries before the Castellis fled European fascism. Never hidden but never expressed, this experience would form the core of a guarded but magnetic character possessed of unfailing old-world charm and a refusal to look backward�traits that ensured Castelli�s visionary precedence in every major new movement from Pop to Conceptual and by which he fostered the worldwide enthusiasm for American contemporary art that is his greatest legacy.
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A JEW MUST DIE
A NOVEL BASED ON A TRUE STORY
BY JACQUES CHESSEX
April 2010, Bitter Lemon Press
Winner of the Prix Goncourt
On April 16, 1942, a handful of Swiss Nazis in Payerne lure Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle merchant, into an empty stable and kill him with a crowbar. Europe is in flames, but this is Switzerland, and Payerne, a rural market town of butchers and bankers, is more worried about unemployment and local bankruptcies than the fate of nations across the border. Fernand Ischi, leader of the local Nazi cell, blames it all on the town�s Jewish population and wants to set an example, thinking the German embassy would be grateful. Ischi's dream of becoming the local gauLeiter is shattered, however, when the milk containers used to dissimulate Bloch's body parts is discovered floating in a lake nearby, leading to his arrest.
Jacques Chessex, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, WAS one of Switzerland�s greatest authors. He knew the murderers, went to school with their children, and has written a terse, implacable story that has awakened memories in a country that seems to endlessly rediscover dark areas of its past. Sadly, he passed away a week before I received a copy of the book, in early December 2009. Chessex, aged 75, was the first non-French citizen to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The precise, sometimes austere beauty of his prose often contrasted with the way he used it to delve into stories of hidden cruelty, crime or passion. His neighbours in the Swiss village of Ropraz were offended by his 2007 novel Le Vampire de Ropraz, published in Britain as The Vampire of Ropraz by Bitter Lemon Press in 2008, which examined a 1903 miscarriage of justice when a local stable boy caught violating animals was convicted of a series of brutal murders. His stories had an undercurrent of Swiss rural isolation, Calvinist repression, and intense social jealousy. His most recent novel, Un Juif Pour L'Exemple, investigated the 1942 killing of a Jewish cattle trader by Swiss Nazis in Chessex's home town of Payerne, and became a national cause celebre in a country still uncomfortable with the true character of its neutrality during the second world war. Chessex won the Goncourt in 1973 for his novel L'Ogre, published in English translation as A Father's Love in 1975. Chessex attended elementary school with the son of the Nazi at the centre of Un Juif pour L'Exemple, then studied at the Jesuit College St Michel in Fribourg, where, aged 17, he founded a poetry magazine, Pays du Lac (Lake Country). At Lausanne University he wrote his dissertation on Francis Ponge, the poet and essayist who might be described as a French William Carlos Williams. He wrote more than 80 books, including 31 novels or other fictions, 28 volumes of poetry, including Les Aveugles du Seul Regard, which won the Prix Mallarm� in 1994, and a number of children's books. He collapsed during a lecture at the Municipal Library in Yverdon les Bains, discussing a play adapted from his 1967 novel La Confession du Pasteur Burg. He had just been asked to comment on the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski.
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FUTURE TENSE
JEWS, JUDAISM, AND ISRAEL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTurY
BY RABBI JONATHAN SACKS
April 2010, Alfred Knopf Schocken
One of the most admired religious thinkers of our time issues a call for world Jewry to reject the self-fulfilling image of �a people alone in the world, surrounded by enemies� and to reclaim Judaism�s original sense of purpose: as a partner with God and with those of other faiths in the never-ending struggle for freedom and social justice for all. We are in danger, says Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of forgetting what Judaism�s place is within the global project of humankind. During the last two thousand years, Jews have lived through persecutions that would have spelled the end of most nations, but they did not see anti-Semitism written into the fabric of the universe. They knew they existed for a purpose, and it was not for themselves alone. Rabbi Sacks believes that the Jewish people have lost their way, that they need to recommit themselves to the task of creating a just world in which the divine presence can dwell among us. Without compromising one iota of Jewish faith, Rabbi Sacks declares, Jews must stand alongside their friends�Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and secular humanist�in defense of freedom against the enemies of freedom, in affirmation of life against those who desecrate life. And they should do this not to win friends or the admiration of others, but because it is what a people of God is supposed to do. Rabbi Sacks�s powerful message of tikkun olam�of using Judaism as a blueprint for repairing an imperfect world�will resonate with people of all faiths. Sir Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
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Missing a Beat
The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim
(Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music and Art)
BY Mark Cohen
April 2010, Syracuse
In 1961, Beat writer Seymour Krim set Greenwich Village on its ear with a slim volume of essays that featured an unleashed voice, a brash title, and a foreword by Norman Mailer. James Baldwin called Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer an extraordinary volume. Saul Bellow published an excerpt in his journal The Noble Savage, and Mailer saluted Krim s jazzy prose with its shifts and shatterings of mood. Despite such praise and critical attention, Krim s work is excluded from most Beat anthologies and is little known outside literary circles. With Missing a Beat, a collection of eighteen essays by Krim published between 1957 and 1989, Cohen introduces this influential writer to a new generation. In the Village Voice, New York Magazine, New York Times, and elsewhere, Krim pioneered a new style of subjective and personal reporting to write about the postwar American scene from a Jewish angle. Aggressively unacademic, Krim s journalism displays the rapid, nervous, breathless tempo that Irving Howe called a hallmark of Jewish literature. Krim outlived his early literary fame, but he produced an impressive body of work and was a tremendous prose stylist. Missing a Beat resurrects an American original, finding Krim a new literary home among such celebrated writers as Norman Mailer, David Mamet, and Saul Bellow.
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KING OF THE JEWS
THE ORIGINS OF THE JEWISH NATION
BY NORMAN GELB
April 2010, JPS Jewish Publication Society
The incredible saga of Jewish history as seen through the eyes of its monarchs We all know about King David and King Solomon, but what about the kings Omri and Uzziah? Of the more than fifty monarchs who sat on the throne of the Jews for over 1000 years, most of us can recall only a few. What we do remember about them has been colored by legend and embellishment. In Kings of the Jews, Norman Gelb tells us the real stories of them all. And in doing so, he reveals how a remarkably resilient people survived divisions, discord, and conquest to forge a vibrant identity that has lasted to the present day. Kings of the Jews explores some of the most dramatic periods in Jewish history: those of the united Israelite kingdom under David and Solomon, the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Babylonian exile, and the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman conquest of Jerusalem. How a resilient people survived division, conquest, and exile more than 2,000 years ago to forge a vibrant identity that has lasted to the present day. Kings of the Jews traces the evolution of the Jewish nation, forerunner of the modern state of Israel, through vivid accounts of the lives and times of the men and women who ruled it -- from Saul to Agrippa II -- in a Middle East even more turbulent than it is today.
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THE TRIALS OF ZION
A NOVEL
BY ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
March 2010. Grand Central
When Harvard Law School Professor Dershowitz is not busy teaching, defending, parenting, defending rights, America, Israel or patrilineal descent, he has been hard at work on a thriller that may become as classic as Leon Uris' Mila 18 and Exodus. There has been a SHOCKING act of terrorism which focuses the world's attention and brings the Middle East to a point of conflagration. A young Jewish American lawyer takes a position on the defense team of a Palestinian who stands accused of terrorism. Her father is a famed criminal defense attorney, who must accept the case to save his family. In order to win the case for the accused Palestinian, he must take into the history of the Middle East and what is termed by many, the Holy Land. There is action on the streets as well as the courtroom in this book. Dershowitz adds a compelling, thrilling plot and unique, memorable characters against a panoramic backdrop that will cry out for a movie deal. east Click the book cover to read more.

DREYFUS
POLITICS, EMOTION, AND THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY
BY RUTH HARRIS
April 2010, Metropolitan Books
What might be the definitive history of the infamous scandal that shook a nation and stunned the world
In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was wrongfully convicted of spying for Germany and imprisoned on Devil�s Island. Over the next few years, France was torn apart as attempts to correct the injustice broke up families, set off anti-Semitic riots, and came close to triggering a coup d�etat against France�s ruling government.
Drawing upon thousands of previously unconsidered sources, Ruth Harris goes beyond the conventional narrative of truth-loving left-wing democrats mobilizing against right-wing proto-Fascists to explain how violently reactionary forces could overtake a country that viewed itself as the flagship of progressive enlightenment.
She shows how complex emotions and interlocking influences�the tension between the military and the intellectuals, the clashing demands of justice and nationalism, and a tangled web of personal connections�shaped both the coalitions working to free Dreyfus and the alliances seeking to protect the army that had convicted him. Sweeping and engaging, Dreyfus offers a new understanding of one of the most contested and consequential moments in modern history.
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Scary. Doesn�t it sound like America? Financial problems that are blamed on Jwes (Madoff, Greenspan, Summer, Levitt, Rubin), and a wartime defeat (Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam)� all leading to culture wars:

FOR THE SOUL OF FRANCE
CULTURE WARS IN THE AGE OF DREFUS
BY FERDERICK BROWN
2010, Knopf
Frederick Brown, cultural historian, author of acclaimed biographies of �mile Zola and Flaubert now gives us an ambitious, far-reaching book�a perfect joining of subject and writer: a portrait of fin-de-si�cle France. He writes about the forces that led up to the twilight years of the nineteenth century when France, defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870�71, was forced to cede the border states of Alsace and Lorraine, and of the resulting civil war, waged without restraint, that toppled Napol�on III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic.
The author describes how postwar France, a nation splintered in the face of humiliation by the foreigner�Prussia�dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state (�Clericalism, there is the enemy!�), and reactionaries, who saw their ideal nation�militant, Catholic, royalist�embodied by Joan of Arc, with their message, that France had suffered its defeat in 1871 for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of �science� and �technological advancement� versus �supernatural intervention.�
Brown shows us how Paris�s most iconic monuments that rose up during those years bear witness to the passionate decades-long quarrel. At one end of Paris was Gustave Eiffel�s tower, built in iron and more than a thousand feet tall, the beacon of a forward-looking nation; at Paris� other end, at the highest point in the city, the basilica of the Sacr�-Coeur, atonement for the country�s sins and moral laxity whose punishment was France�s defeat in the war . . .
Brown makes clear that the Dreyfus Affair�the cannonade of the 1890s�can only be understood in light of these converging forces. �The Affair� shaped the character of public debate and informed private life. At stake was the fate of a Republic born during the Franco-Prussian War and reared against bitter opposition. The losses that abounded during this time�the financial loss suffered by thousands in the crash of the Union G�nerale, a bank founded in 1875 to promote Catholic interests with Catholic capital outside the Rothschilds� sphere of influence, along with the failure of the Panama Canal Company�spurred the partisan press, which blamed both disasters on Jewry. The author writes how the roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900. Instead they became the festering point that led to France�s surrender to Hitler�s armies in 1940, when the Third Republic fell and the Vichy government replaced it, with Marshal P�tain heralded as the latest incarnation of Joan of Arc, France�s savior . . . Click the book cover to read more.

In moments of national panic, civil conduct and civic standards get thrown away�.

WHY THE DREYFUS AFFAIR MATTERS
BY LOUIS BEGLEY
September 2009, Yale University Press
In December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a brilliant French artillery officer and a Jew of Alsatian descent, was court-martialed for selling secrets to the German military attach� in Paris based on perjured testimony and trumped-up evidence. The sentence was military degradation and life imprisonment on Devil�s Island, a hellhole off the coast of French Guiana. Five years later, the case was overturned, and eventually Dreyfus was completely exonerated. Meanwhile, the Dreyfus Affair tore France apart, pitting Dreyfusards�committed to restoring freedom and honor to an innocent man convicted of a crime committed by another�against nationalists, anti-Semites, and militarists who preferred having an innocent man rot to exposing the crimes committed by ministers of war and the army�s top brass in order to secure Dreyfus�s conviction. Was the Dreyfus Affair merely another instance of the rise in France of a virulent form of anti-Semitism? In Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, the acclaimed novelist draws upon his legal expertise to create a riveting account of the famously complex case, and to remind us of the interest each one of us has in the faithful execution of laws as the safeguard of our liberties and honor.
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PALESTINE BETRAYED
BY EFRAIM KARSH, King College London
April 2010, Yale
One of the foremost academic thinkers on Middle Eastern history and politics, Professor Karsh writes a searing account of the UN resolution to partittion Paalestine and its bloody aftermath. The 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades, and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society. Its origins, and that of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920�48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive under peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. So what was the real cause of the breakdown in relations between the two communities?
In this brave and groundbreaking book, Efraim Karsh tells the story from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, a corrupt and extremist leadership worked toward eliminating the Jewish national revival and protecting its own interests. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN, and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both Palestinian and Jewish sides. It is an arresting story of delicate political and diplomatic maneuvering by leading figures�Ben Gurion, Hajj Amin Husseini, Abdel Rahman Azzam, King Abdullah, Bevin, and Truman �over the years leading up to partition, through the slide to war and its enduring consequences. Palestine Betrayed is vital reading for understanding the origin of disputes that remain crucial today.
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HERE IN OUR AUSCHWITZ By Tadeusz Borowski
Translated by Madeline G. Levine
April 2010, Yale
Tadeusz Borowski was a talented young poet when he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He emerged at the end of the Second World War to become one of the most influential writer-witnesses to the Nazi concentration camp system. This book offers the first authoritative translation of Borowski�s prose fiction, including numerous stories that have never appeared in English before. These are the chilling writings of a man who has experienced horrifying brutality and sees no possibility for human redemption. Click the book cover to read more.

FAITH AND POWER
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
BY BERNARD LEWIS
April 2010, Oxford
Bernard Lewis is recognized around the globe as one of the leading authorities on Islam. Hailed as "the world's foremost Islamic scholar" (Wall Street Journal ), as "a towering figure among experts on the culture and religion of the Muslim world" (Baltimore Sun ), and as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies" (New York Times ), Lewis is nothing less than a national treasure, a trusted voice that politicians, journalists, historians, and the general public have all turned to for insight into the Middle East. Now, Lewis has brought together writings on religion and government in the Middle East, so different than in the Western world. The collection includes previously unpublished writings, English originals of articles published before only in foreign languages, and an introduction to the book by Lewis.
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THE EXECUTOR
A Mystery Suspense Novel
By Jesse Kellerman
April 2010, Putnam
Mr. Kellerman, who reads a page of Talmud (daf yomi) each day, is the son of mystery writers Jonathan and Faye Kellerman. A celebrated author of books and plays, this is a novel filled with intelligence and suspense. It was inspired by a friend of the author who had a brief job of living with an elderly couple in exchange for walking and talking with them about the old days.
Perpetual graduate student Joseph Geist is at his wit's end. He is a man of Inaction. Nothing really spurs him to action. Recently kicked out of their shared apartment by his girlfriend, he's left with little more than a half bust of Nietzsche's head and the realization that he's homeless and unemployed. He's hit a dead end on his dissertation; his funding has been cut off. He doesn't even have a phone. Desperate for some source of income, he searches the local newspaper and finds a curious ad:
CONVERSATIONALIST SOUGHT.
SERIOUS APPLICANTS ONLY.
PLEASE CALL 617-XXX-XXXX
BETWEEN SEVEN A.M. AND TWO P.M.
NO SOLICITORS.
And so Joseph meets Alma Spielman: a woman who, with her old-world ways and razor-sharp mind, is his intellectual soul mate. How is he to know that what seems to be the best decision of his life is the one that seals his fate?
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SECRETS OF A JEWISH MOTHER
REAL STORIES, REAL ADVICE, REAL LOVE
BY JiLL ZARIN , Gloria Kamen and Lisa Wexler
April 2010, Dutton
Zarin, who appeared on �Real Housewives,� and who helps to run a popular family run interior design and furnishings retailer on Manhattan Lower East Side, offers advice. Born and raised in Woodmere, New York, Jill graduated from Simmons College School of Retail Management. She began her career as Assistant Buyer at Filene's and also held positions as Vice President of Sales at Royce Hosiery and National Sales Manager/Vice President of Great American Knitting Mills Jockey division. Jill joined her husband Bobby Zarin, owner of Zarin Fabrics and Home Furnishings, in managing the company after they got married. Jill serves as a senior executive at Zarin Fabrics and focuses on Sales and Marketing while her husband concentrates on their real estate businesses in New York, Las Vegas and Florida. When approached to star in the reality show "Real Housewives of New York City," Jill saw it as a great opportunity to expand the Zarin Fabrics brand. Through her expertise in textiles, Jill is also busy developing products for the Home market. Jill is also the Brand Spokesperson for Kodak.
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WILDFLOWERS OF TEREZIN
A NOVEL
BY ROBERT ELMER
April 2010, Abingdon
When nurse Hanne Abrahamsen impulsively shields Steffen Petersen from a nosy Gestapo agent, she�s convinced the Lutheran pastor is involved in the Danish Underground. Nothing could be further from the truth. But truth is hard to come by in the fall of 1943, when Copenhagen is placed under Martial Law and Denmark�s Jews�including Hanne�suddenly face deportation to the Nazi prison camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia. Days darken and danger mounts. Steffen�s faith deepens as he takes greater risks to protect Hanne. But are either of them willing to pay the ultimate price for their love?
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NOW IN PAPERBACK

A MAD DESIRE TO DANCE
A NOVEL
BY ELIE WIESEL
April 13, 2010, Schocken
Now in paperback, Wiesel�s novel �reminds us, with force, that his writing is alive and strong. The master has once again found a startling freshness.��Le Monde des Livres
�A European expatriate living in New York, Doriel suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, survived World War II only to die soon after in France in an accident, together with his father. Doriel was a hidden child during the war, and his knowledge of the Holocaust is largely limited to what he finds in movies, newsreels, and books. Doriel�s parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him filled with longing but unable to experience the most basic joys in life. He plunges into an intense study of Judaism, but instead of finding solace, he comes to believe that he is possessed by a dybbuk. Surrounded by ghosts, spurred on by demons, Doriel finally turns to Dr. Th�r�se Goldschmidt, a psychoanalyst who finds herself particularly intrigued by her patient. The two enter into an uneasy relationship based on exchange: of dreams, histories, and secrets. And despite Doriel�s initial resistance, Dr. Goldschmidt helps bring him to a crossroads�and to a shocking denouement.
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VIENNA SECRETS
A MAX LIEBERMANN MYSTERY
BY FRANK TALLIS
April 2010, Random House
In Freud�s dangerous, dazzling Vienna of 1903, an ingenious doctor and an intrepid detective again challenge psychotic criminals across a landscape teetering between the sophisticated and the savage, the thrilling future and the primitive past. On opposite sides of the city, two men are found beheaded on church grounds. Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt is baffled. Could the killer be mentally ill, someone the victims came into contact with? Some are even blaming the murders on the devil. But when psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann learns that both victims were vocal members of a shadowy anti-Semitic group, he turns his gaze to the city�s close-knit Hasidic community. The doctor is drawn into an urban underworld that hosts and hides virulent racists on one side and followers of kabbalah on the other. And as the evidence�and bodies�pile up, Liebermann must reconsider his own path, the one that led him away from the miraculous and toward a life of the mind.
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The Unspoken Alliance
Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa
BY Sasha Polakow-Suransky
May 2010, Pantheon
COVER BLURB: An account of Israel�s military cooperation with apartheid South Africa. Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was the darling of the international Left. But after its occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Israel found itself isolated from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. Sasha Polakow-Suransky tells the full story of how Israel�s booming arms industry and South Africa�s isolation led to a hidden military alliance that grew deeper after the Likud Party came to power in 1977 and continued even after Israel passed sanctions against South Africa in the late 1980s.
At the time of Israel�s independence in 1948, the two countries couldn�t have been more different: Israel was a nation of Holocaust survivors; South Africa was ruled by Nazi sympathizers. But as their covert military relationship blossomed, they exchanged billions of dollars of extremely sensitive material, including nuclear technology, which boosted Israel�s sagging economy and strengthened the beleaguered apartheid regime. Polakow-Suransky has uncovered previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel�s diplomatic corps and in violation of the United Nations arms embargo.
�Based on extensive archival research and interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries, The Unspoken Alliance tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel�s estrangement from the Left. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Israel�s history and its future.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a Senior Editor at Foreign Affairs and holds a doctorate in Modern History from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2003-2006. Click the book cover to read more.

HITLER�S HOLY RELICS
A TRUE STORY OF NAZI PLUNDER
AND THE RACE TO RECOVER THE CROWN JEWELS OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
BY SIDNEY S. KIRKPATICK
May 2010, Simon and Schuster
Hiter stole the jewels from Austria to help give mystical legitimacy to his reign and regime and support his race theories of the Third Reich. They disappeared after WW2. Patton and Eisenhower then ordered Lt Walter Horn to find them. This is the story.
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WITZ
The Story of the Last Jew on Earth
A NOVEL
BY JOSHUA COHEN
May 2010, Dalkey
One of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt . . .
Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, �real� world, another last Jew�the last living Holocaust survivor�sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
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THE FROZEN RABBI
A NOVEL
BY STEVE STERN
May 2010, Algonquin
And what happens when Bernie Karp, the impressionable fifteen-year-old son of the couple in whose home the rabbi lies frozen, inadvertently thaws out the ancient man? Such are the questions raised in this wickedly funny and ingenious novel by author Steve Stern, who, according to the Washington Post Book World, belongs in the company of such writers as Stanley Elkin, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Chabon, Mark Helprin, and Philip Roth, all of them "innovative and restless practitioners of contemporary American-Jewish fantasy." When the rabbi comes fully and mischievously to life, Bernie finds himself on an unexpected odyssey to understand his heritage (Jewish), his role in life (nebbish hero), and his destiny (to ensure the rabbi�s future). and the reader enters the lives of the people who struggled to transport the holy man�s block of ice, surviving pogroms, a transatlantic journey (in steerage, of course), an ice-house fire in Manhattan�s Lower East Side, and finally, a train trip to the city on the Mississippi.
An epic novel in the spirit of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Steve Stern's The Frozen Rabbi is a wildly entertaining yet deeply thoughtful look at the burdens inherent in handing down traditions from one generation to the next.
Steve Stern, winner of the National Jewish Book award, is the author of several previous novels and novellas. He teaches at Skidmore College in upstate New York.
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THE REBBE
THE LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
OF MENACHEM MENDEL SCHNEERSON
BY SAMUEL HEILMAN AND MENACHEM FRIEDMAN
May 2010, Princeton
Jonathan Sarna calls it, �Brilliant, well-researched, and sure to be controversial�.�
From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson--revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe--built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. Swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, he came to believe that he could deny death and change history. Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman paint an unforgettable portrait of Schneerson, showing how he reinvented himself from an aspiring French-trained electrical engineer into a charismatic leader who believed that he and his Lubavitcher Hasidic emissaries could transform the world. They reveal how his messianic convictions ripened and how he attempted to bring the ancient idea of a day of redemption onto the modern world's agenda. Heilman and Friedman also trace what happened after the Rebbe's death, by which time many of his followers had come to think of him as the Messiah himself. The Rebbe tracks Schneerson's remarkable life from his birth in Russia, to his student days in Berlin and Paris, to his rise to global renown in New York, where he developed and preached his powerful spiritual message from the group's gothic mansion in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This compelling book demonstrates how Schneerson's embrace of traditionalism and American-style modernity made him uniquely suited to his messianic mission
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HOLOCAUST
THE NAZI PERSECUTION AND MURDER OF THE JEWS
BY PETER LONGERICH
May 2010, Oxford
In 1998, Peter Longerich published Politik der Vernichtung (Politics of Destruction), a stunning re-examination of the Holocaust. The book received universal acclaim, and is now generally recognized by historians as the standard account of this horrific chapter in human history. Now finally available in English, this masterful history uses an unrivalled range of sources to lay out in clear detail the steps taken by the Nazis that would lead ultimately to the Final Solution. Focusing closely on the perpetrators and exploring the process of decision making, Longerich convincingly shows that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of the Nazis' political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses. Rather, from 1933 anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement's attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule--and one which crucially shaped Nazi policy decisions. Holocaust is perhaps most remarkable for its extensive use of the 1930s archives of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, which re-emerged in the 1990s after years languishing in Moscow. The letters and reports from this archive document in detail the attacks suffered by ordinary Jewish people from their German neighbors. They show how, contrary to what has been believed in the past, the German populace responded relatively enthusiastically to Nazi anti-Semitism. This long-awaited English edition has been fully updated by Longerich himself. It features revised appendices with notes and further reading, as well as a new preface by the author. In addition, Longerich has added new material on the Jewish victims and on the camps and the ghettos, and has extended the story from the end of the war right up to the present day. In all, it is the most complete treatment ever published on the history of this monumental tragedy.
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RUNNING COMMENTARY
THE CONTENTIOUS MAGAZINE THAT TRANSFORMED THE JEWISH LEFT INTO THE NEOCONSERVATIVE RIGHT
BY BENJAMIN BALINT
May 2010, PublicAffairs
In the years of cultural and political ferment following World War II, a new generation of Jewish- American writers and thinkers arose to make an indelible mark on American culture. Commentary was their magazine; the place where they and other politically sympathetic intellectuals�Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, James Baldwin, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick and many others�shared new work, explored ideas, and argued with each other. Founded by the offspring of immigrants, Commentary began life as a voice for the marginalized and a feisty advocate for civil rights and economic justice. But just as American culture moved in its direction, it began�inexplicably to some�to veer right, becoming the voice of neoconservativism and defender of the powerful. This lively history, based on unprecedented access to the magazine�s archives and dozens of original interviews, provocatively explains that shift while recreating the atmosphere of some of the most exciting decades in American intellectual life.
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SECRET LANGUAGE
Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols
By Barry Blake
May 2010, Oxford
From the chat codes "PAW" or "Code 9" that teens use to let their friends know that parents are eavesdropping, to the high-powered, computer-driven encryptions used by governments to prevent foreign powers from stealing classified information, covert language is ubiquitous in our society. Now, in Secret Language, Barry Blake takes the reader on a fascinating excursion down this mysterious trail of words, ranging across time and culture. With revelations on every page, and sample codes and puzzles for the reader to crack, it will entertain everyone with an urge to know more about the most arcane and curious uses of language. From backmasking to the Enigma Machine, from magic words to literary symbols, here is a lively, engaging tour of languages that hide their meanings from all but a chosen few. Blake explains the difference between ciphers and codes (Morse code, oddly enough, is not a code but a cipher) and shows how secret messages have been written--and broken--for almost two thousand years. He explores the history and uses of the slang and argot of schools and trades, tracing the stories of centuries-old cants such as those used by sailors and criminals--among them polari, the mix of Italian, YIDDISH (Gelt, basket, mushugene) and slang once spoken among strolling players and circus folk and most recently adopted by the gay community. He examines the sacred languages of ancient cults and religions, uncovers the workings of onomancy, spells, and gematria, considers the obliqueness of allusion and parody, and celebrates the absurdities of euphemism and jargon. Anyone who enjoys word games and riddles, who loves finding out the hidden meanings of slang or argot, or who delights in spy novels or real-life tales of espionage, will find this volume an endless source of fascination
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TO SERVE GOD AND WAL-MART
THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN FREE ENTERPRISE
BY BETHANY MORETON
May 2010, Harvard University Press
Moreton, an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia, writes that Wal-Mart was able to spring out of the work ethics of the Bible Belt, and it could never have grown from the �northeast.� REALLY??
What is she saying when she says the �Northeast?�
She writes that while the industrial America was built in the Northeast and urban North, it was SunBelt rural Southerners that comprised the postwar service sector. Industrial culture has been urban, modernist, CATHOLIC AND JEWISH, and international. Post industrial service work spoke with a Southern drawl and of Jeses, sand country music, and looked with contempt at unions. This book looks at how pro-business, Christian thought built Wal-mart and the service economy.
PW writes, �The world's largest corporation has grown to prominence in America's Sun Belt�the relatively recent seat of American radical agrarian populism�and amid a feverish antagonism to corporate monopoly. In the spirit of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? historian Moreton unearths the roots of the seeming anomaly of corporate populism, in a timely and penetrating analysis that situates the rise of Wal-Mart in a postwar confluence of forces, from federal redistribution of capital favoring the rural South and West to the FAMILY VALUES symbolized by Sam Walton's largely white, rural, female workforce (the basis of a new economic and ideological niche), the New Christian Right's powerful pro-business and countercultural movement of the 1970s and '80s and its harnessing of electoral power. Giving Max Weber's Protestant ethic something of a late-20th-century update, Moreton shows how this confluence wedded Christianity to the free market. Moreton's erudition and clear prose elucidate much in the area of recent labor and political history, while capturing the centrality of movement cultures in the evolving face of American populism.
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EARLY MODERN JEWRY
A NEW CULTURAL HISTORY
BY DAVID B. RUDERMAN
May 2010, Princeton
Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before. Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists. In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWS is not A HISTORY OF THE SHORT JEWS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWS
BY MICHAEL BRENNER
Translated by Jeremiah Riemer
May 2010, Princeton
A Short History of the Jews is the story of the Jewish people told in a sweeping and powerful historical narrative. Michael Brenner chronicles the Jewish experience from Biblical times to today, tracing what is at heart a drama of migration and change, yet one that is also deeply rooted in tradition. He surveys the latest scholarly perspectives in Jewish history, making this short history the most learned yet broadly accessible book available on the subject. Brenner takes readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. This richly illustrated book is full of fascinating and often personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into the land of Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Brenner traces the major events, developments, and personalities that have shaped Jewish history down through the centuries, and highlights the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science. Breathtaking in scope, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the history of the Jewish people marvelously to life.
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AN AMERICAN TYPE
A NOVEL
BY HENRY ROTH
June 2010, Norton
Henry Roth wrote CALL IT SLEEP, one of the great American novels in 1934. He died in 1995. Among his papers, there were nearly 2000 unpublished items, was found this novel. Set in 1938, An American Type reintroduces us to Roth�s alter ego, Ira, who abandons his controlling lover, Edith, in favor of a blond, aristocratic pianist at Yaddo, the retreat for writers. The ensuing conflict between his Jewish ghetto roots and his high-flown, writerly aspirations forces Ira, temporarily, to abandon his family for the sun-soaked promise of the American West. Fast-paced but wrenching, set against a backdrop of crumbling piers, bedbug-infested SROs, and skyscrapers in glimmering Manhattan and seedy L.A., An American Type is not only, perhaps, the last firsthand testament of the Depression but also a universal statement about the constant reinvention of American identity and, with its lyrical ending, the transcendence of love. This posthumous work was edited by Willing Davidson, a former fiction editor at The New Yorker.
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PEEP SHOW
A NOVEL
BY JOSHUA BRAFF
June 2010, Algonquin
Joshua Braff, brother of actor Zach Braff, wrote THE UNTHINKABLE THOUGHTS OF JACOB GREEN, a few years ago, which I thought was one of the best and funniest Jewish novels of the decade. Now he has prepared a second novel for us.
A kid who likes photos� is it any wonder that his name is Arbus?
David Arbus will be graduating from high school in the spring of 1975. His divorced parents offer two options: embrace his mother�s Hasidic sect or go into his father�s line of work, running a porn theater in the heart of New York�s Times Square. He joins the family business. What else would a healthy seventeen-year-old with an interest in photography do? But he didn�t think it would mean giving up his mother and sister altogether. Peep Show is the bittersweet story of a young man torn between a mother trying to erase her past and a father struggling to maintain his dignity in a less-than-savory business. As David peeps through the spaces in the screen that divides the men and the women in Hasidic homes, we can�t help but think of his father�s Imperial Theatre, where other men are looking at other women through the peepholes. As entertaining as it is moving, Peep Show looks at the elaborate ensembles, rituals, assumed names, and fierce loyalties of two secret worlds, stripping away the curtains of both.
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EVERY MAN IN THIS VILLAGE IS A LIAR
AN EDUCATION IN WAR
BY MEGAN STACK
June 2010, Doubleday
A shattering account of war and disillusionment from a young woman reporter on the front lines of the war on terror. A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a� twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories. Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is Megan K. Stack�s riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews. Beautiful, savage, and unsettling, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is a memoir about the wars of the� twenty-first century that readers will long remember
Note: check out the anti Jewish words in the poetry slam in Yemen.
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The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire,
James Loffler (Univ of Virginia)
June 2010, Yale
Drawing on a mass of unpublished writings and archival sources from prerevolutionary Russian conservatories, this book offers an insightful account of the Jewish search for a modern identity in Russia through music, rather than politics or religion

Hmmmm
Hmmmmmm
With all these books below
Let�s publish our own book and call it
101 Things I Learned in�.. Rabbinical School�. Cantorial School� Hebrew School� etc.
Although they trademarked the title, we can call it �36 Things I Learned� �
What do you think?

101 THINGS I LEARNED
IN BUSINESS SCHOOL
By MICHAEL w. PREIS with Matthew Frederick
May 2010, Grand Central
101 THINGS I LEARNED IN BUSINESS SCHOOL will cover a wide range of lessons that are basic enough for the novice business student as well as inspiring to the experienced practitioner. The unique packaging of this book will attract people of all ages who have always wondered whether business school would be a smart career choice for them. Judging by the growing number of people taking the GMATs (the entrance exam for business school) each year, clearly more people than ever are thinking about heading in this direction. Subjects include accounting, finance, marketing, management, leadership, human relations, and much more - in short, everything one would expect to encounter in business school. Illustrated in the same fun, gift book format as 101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL, this will be the perfect gift for a recent college or high school grad, or even for someone already well-versed in the business world.
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ANNE FRANK
THE ANNE FRANK HOUSE AUTHORIZED GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY
BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON
July 2010, Hill and Wang
Drawing on the unique historical sites, archives, expertise, and unquestioned authority of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, New York Times bestselling authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Col�n have created the first authorized and exhaustive graphic biography of Anne Frank. Their account is complete, covering the lives of Anne�s parents, Edith and Otto; Anne's first years in Frankfurt; the rise of Nazism; the Franks' immigration to Amsterdam; war and occupation; Anne's years in the Secret Annex; betrayal and arrest; her deportation and tragic death in Bergen-Belsen; the survival of Anne's father; and his recovery and publication of her astounding diary.
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NOW IN PAPERBACK

THE RED SQUAD
A NOVEL
BY E. M. BRONER
May 2010, Pantheon
BOOKLIST: �The arrival of an envelope, mailed anonymously, forces Professor Anka Pappas to recall the �thrilling and terrible time� when she and five mismatched colleagues taught English composition in a Detroit university and occupied a shared office known as the Bullpen. The envelope�s contents show that she and other Bullpenners were under surveillance for antiwar activities during the late 1960s. The Red Squad is an insightful, affecting, and often funny tale of higher education, as seen by �academic Okies��adjunct faculty�struggling to finish their PhDs while America was engaged in another war disapproved of by many and enduring ham-handed repression of dissent. It�s also an engaging tale of a small group of lonely young people whose shared experiences bind them for a lifetime. Broner�s writing is concise yet pithy, as she limns Anka�s interest in fellow Bullpenner Kevin, a Jesuit seeking release from his priestly vows, and charts the decline of Detroit. This is one of those books that will grow in readers� estimation long after they�ve finished reading it.�
Click the book cover to read more, and to read more about the BERNSTEIN character.

RICH BOY
A NOVEL
BY SHARON POMERANTZ
August 2010, Twelve
Ten years in the making, Rich Boy is a well crafted novel of desire, money, grace, love, and class. It spans 4 decades, from the Sixties to the Nineties in the life of a young man, Robert Vishniak, who wants to escape his past. It is a story of rich and poor, and rich and wealthy. Click the book cover to read more.

BURNT BOOKS
RABBI NAChMAN of BRaTZLAV AND FRANZ KAPKA
BY RODGER KAMENETZ
August 2010, Jewish Encounters � Schocken Nextbook
A dual biography of the venerated Hasidic storyteller Rabbi Nachman and the iconic modern master Franz Kafka that uncovers surprising parallels between two tragically abbreviated lives, both spent in search of spiritual meaning.
Rodger Kamenetz, acclaimed author of The Jew in the Lotus, has long been engaged in the study and practice of Jewish spirituality. And he has for many years taught a course in Prague on Franz Kafka. The more he learned about the life and work of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (great-grandson of the Ba�al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism), the more aware he became of unexpected connections between the lives and works of Kafka, a secular artist fascinated by Jewish mysticism, and Rabbi Nachman, a religious mystic who reached out to secular Jews. Both men died young of tuberculosis. Both invented new forms of storytelling that explore the search for meaning in an illogical, unjust world. Both gained prominence with the posthumous publication of their writing. And most intriguing of all, both left strict instructions that their unpublished writings were to be burned after they died.
Kamenetz uses these episodes as points of departure on a journey into the spiritual quests of these two troubled and beloved figures. He concludes with an analysis of their major works that illuminates the remarkable similarities between them. In their attempts to understand the existence of a Supreme Being in an imperfect world, both men teach us a great deal about the role of imagination in the Jewish spiritual experience.
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THE SONDERBERG CASE
A NOVEL
BY ELIE WIESEL
August 2010, Knopf
From the Nobel laureate and author of the masterly Night: a deeply felt, beautifully written novel of morality, guilt, and innocence.
Despite personal success, Yedidyah�a theater critic in New York City, husband to a stage actress, father to two sons�finds himself increasingly drawn to the past; as he reflects on his life, he longingly reminisces about the relationships he once had with the men in his family: his father, his uncle, his grandfather. But his longing takes on another aspect when he is assigned to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate named Werner Sonderberg. Sonderberg returned alone from a walk in the Adirondacks with an elderly uncle, whose lifeless body was soon retrieved from the woods. His plea is enigmatic: �Guilty . . . and not guilty.� But it strikes a chord in Yedidyah, plunging him into feelings that bring him harrowingly close to madness. As Sonderberg�s trial moves along a path of dizzying yet revelatory twists and turns, Yedidyah begins to understand his own family�s hidden past and finally liberates himself from the shadow it has cast over his life.
With his signature elegance and thoughtfulness, Wiesel has given us an enthralling psychological mystery, both vividly dramatic and profoundly emotional.. Click the book cover to read more.

Bloodlands
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
By Timothy Snyder (Yale University)
October 2010, Basic
This book will come out in Fall 2010. Here is a part of a lecture Snyder gave in Vilnius in 2009.
Though Europe thrives, its writers and politicians are preoccupied with death. The mass killings of European civilians during the 1930s and 1940s are the reference of today's confused discussions of memory, and the touchstone of whatever common ethics Europeans may share. The bureaucracies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union turned individual lives into mass death, particular humans into quotas of those to be killed. The Soviets hid their mass shootings in dark woods and falsified the records of regions in which they had starved people to death; the Germans had slave laborers dig up the bodies of their Jewish victims and burn them on giant grates. Historians must, as best they can, cast light into these shadows and account for these people. Auschwitz, generally taken to be an adequate or even a final symbol of the evil of mass killing, is in fact only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come. The very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz warp our understanding of the Holocaust: we know about Auschwitz because there were survivors, and there were survivors because Auschwitz was a labor camp as well as a death factory. These survivors were largely West European Jews, because Auschwitz is where West European Jews were usually sent. After World War II, West European Jewish survivors were free to write and publish as they liked, whereas East European Jewish survivors, if caught behind the iron curtain, could not. In the West, memoirs of the Holocaust could (although very slowly) enter into historical writing and public consciousness.
This form of survivors' history, of which the works of Primo Levi are the most famous example, only inadequately captures the reality of the mass killing. The Diary of Anne Frank concerns assimilated European Jewish communities, the Dutch and German, whose tragedy, though horrible, was a very small part of the Holocaust. By 1943 and 1944, when most of the killing of West European Jews took place, the Holocaust was in considerable measure complete. Two thirds of the Jews who would be killed during the war were already dead by the end of 1942. The main victims, the Polish and Soviet Jews, had been killed by bullets fired over death pits or by carbon monoxide from internal combustion engines pumped into gas chambers at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor in occupied Poland. Auschwitz as symbol of the Holocaust excludes those who were at the center of the historical event. The largest group of Holocaust victims�religiously Orthodox and Yiddish-speaking Jews of Poland, or, in the slightly contemptuous German term, Ostjuden �were culturally alien from West Europeans, including West European Jews. To some degree, they continue to be marginalized from the memory of the Holocaust. The death facility Auschwitz-Birkenau was constructed on territories that are today in Poland, although at the time they were part of the German Reich. Auschwitz is thus associated with today's Poland by anyone who visits, yet relatively few Polish Jews and almost no Soviet Jews died there. The two largest groups of victims are nearly missing from the memorial symbol.
An adequate vision of the Holocaust would place Operation Reinhardt, the murder of the Polish Jews in 1942, at the center of its history. Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in the world, Warsaw the most important Jewish city. This community was exterminated at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor. Some 1.5 million Jews were killed at those three facilities, about 780,863 at Treblinka alone. Only a few dozen people survived these three death facilities. Be zec, though the third most important killing site of the Holocaust, after Auschwitz and Treblinka, is hardly known. Some 434,508 Jews perished at that death factory, and only two or three survived. About a million more Polish Jews were killed in other ways, some at Chelmno, Majdanek, or Auschwitz, many more shot in actions in the eastern half of the country
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