Book Reviews

Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World. Avi Jorisch Gefen Publishing House LTD In the summer of 2014, along with the rest of the world, I was watching closely as Israel launched  Operation Protective Edge to protect her citizens from Hamas-led...

Gone To Dust, A Novel Matt Goldman Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC If the litmus test for a compelling murder mystery is not being able to put a book down, Matt Goldman’s first novel, Gone To Dust, is quite the success and already a New York Times Best Seller. Aided...

Peter Lovenheim explains, “It began wonderfully, as romances do, but later devolved into a turbulent on again, off again affair. She was looking for a commitment I couldn’t make and I was looking for emotional intimacy she couldn’t give.” Years of breakups and makeups. The relationship became polarized—he was an anxious partner demanding more intimacy and she was an avoidant partner who shut down and withdrew. His Anxious Attachment style and her Avoidant Attachment style led to the Anxious-Avoidant Trap.

Robert H. Gillette Charleston: History Press, 2015 252 pages Robert H. Gillette is a retired educator living in Lynchburg, Va., who researched this intriguing story and retraced it within its larger historical context through the experiences of Werner (Töpper) Angress...

Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism Peter Adams Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014, 230 pages ISBN: 978-0-472-07205-7 Peter Adams is a former journalist who teaches English at Old Dominion University. His study recounts the story of...

The Undoing Project Michael Lewis 362 pp. W.W Norton & Co, 2017 ISBN 978-03932544594 362 pages, $28.95 In the early 1940s, young Danny Kahneman was walking the streets of Paris after curfew. He had gone to school early so he could take off his sweater before his...

Judas Amos Oz Translated by Nicholas de Lange Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 305 pages, $25 Amos Oz, Israel’s premier author, is the very embodiment of Eretz Yisrael Hayafa, that beautifully inspiring Israel—particularly in its early pioneering phase—a reborn nation...

Violins of Hope (Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour) James A. Grymes Harper Perennial, 2014 319 page, $15.99 Author James A. Grymes is a noted professor of musicology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte who...

The Devil’s Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich Robert K. Wittman and David Kinney Harper,513 pages, $35 The Devil’s Diary of interconnected significant dramas is an invaluable addition to the continued growth of Holocaust literature and...

Inside the Middle East Avi Melamed Skyhorse Publishing 2016 374 pages, $26.99 Dennis Ross was astonished to realize that senior White House, State, and Defense officials had little or no knowledge of what transpired in previous administrations’ relationships with...

Operation Paperclip (The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought  Nazi Scientists to America) Annie Jacobsen Little, Brown and Company, 2014 575 pages, $30  Author Annie Jacobsen, a Princeton University graduate, already proved her superb investigative and writing...

Doomed to Succeed The U.S.-Israeli Relationship  from Truman to Obama Dennis Ross Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2015 474pp., $30 ISBN 978-0-374-14146-2  Dennis Ross must be doing something right. He has been criticized by both israelis and Palestinians, by...

Unlikely Warrior A Pacifist Rabbi’s Journey from the Pulpit to Iwo Jima Lee Mandel Pelican, 2015 368 pp., $28.95 ISBN: 978-1-455619887 To a child growing up at the end of the 20th century, the epic battles of the Second World War were 50 years in the distant past...

It’s summer, that time of year when everyone drops everything they’re doing, finds a quiet stretch of sandy shore and spends all day delving into their new favorite books. Or maybe not. But whatever your plans, there’s no denying that the season brings a bumper crop...

The Promise (A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty and Friendship) by Rachelle Friedman Globe Pequot Press, 2014. $24.95 Rachelle Friedman and Chris Chapman, both from Virginia Beach, met at East Carolina University in Greenville, N. C.,...

America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder Bret Stephens Sentinel, 2014 269 pages, $27.95 ISBN 978-1-59184-662-8 Bret Stephens, is a Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal and...

The Victory of Zionism Emmanuel Navon 2014 366 pages, $18 (paper) ISBN 1-502-32794-5 Ari Shavit’s best-selling cri de coeur, My Promised Land, was naturally not a hit with the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its supporters. Yet despite its...

Retelling Genesis by Barry Louis Polisar Illustrations by Roni Lynn Polisar Rainbow Morning Music: Silver Spring, Maryland 32 pages, $7.95 Author, musician, recording artist, songwriter and entertainer Barry Louis Polisar was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and grew up in the...

75 Jahre Reichskristallnacht Anna Rosmus Grafenau: Samples, 2013 157 pages Anna Rosmus, the German author and public intellectual, is well-known to quite a few in the Jewish community of Hampton Roads since the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Old...

Violins of Hope (Violins of the Holocaust—Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour) by James A. Grymes Harper Perennial, 2014 319 pages, $15.9 Author James Author James A. Grymes, noted professor of musicology at the University of North...

The Baseball Haggadah: A Festival of Freedom and Springtime in 15 Innings by Rabbi Sharon Forman Illustrated by Lisa J. Teitelbaum 54 pages 2015/5775 A Reform rabbi and a mom of “dedicated little leaguers,” Rabbi Sharon Forman has created a Haggadah that covers all of...

Jews and Words by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger Yale University Press, 2012. 232 pages Jews and Words is not an ordinary book. It is the enchanting outcome of a unique collaborative conversation between a father and daughter. Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger are both...

Suspended Sentences Patrick Modiano Translated by Mark Polizzotti Yale University Press, 2014 ISBN 978-0-300-19805-8, 215 pp.(paper) Patrick Modiano, French writer of Flemish/ Italian/Jewish ancestry and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature is almost unheard...

Dissident Gardens Jonathan Lethem Doubleday, 2013 366 pages, $27.95 ISBN 978-0-385-53493-2 As the American literary giants of the mid-20th century gradually leave the scene, the young literary lions who follow are now producing mature works. Among them is Jonathan...

Open Heart Elie Wiesel Translated from the French by Marion Wiesel New York, Knopf. 2012 79 pages, $20 Originally published in France in 2011, prolific author Ellie Wiesel’s bestseller is light only in size. Open Heart is a generous gift from a truly loving heart of...

Kosher Cuisine: For a New Generation Cantor Mitch, The Singing Chef Red Portal Press, 2014 168pp., $16.95, ISBN 978-1-938063-53-4 On Thursday, Nov. 6, at noon, Cantor Mitch Kowitz will be present in partnership with Beth Sholom Village and Jewish Family Service as...

Hanna and Walter Hanna and Walter Kohner With Frederick Kohner iUniverse, reissued 2008 147pp., $14.95 ISBN 978-0-595-46598-9 On Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Women’s Cabinet PLUS ONE brunch, co-hosted by the UJFT Holocaust Commission, attendees will hear a Holocaust story...

Father, Son, Stone Allan H. Goodman Solomon Publications, 2014 463 pp., $18.99 ISBN 978-0-9670973-6-7 So, what does a Norfolk kid who graduated from Granby High School, practiced law for 18 years and served as a federal administrative judge for a couple of decades do...

The Pope and Mussolini (The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe) David I. Kertzer Random House, 2014 549 pages, $32 We are in the debt of prolific and award-winning author David I. Kertzer, the Paul Dupee, Jr. University professor of social...

The Holiday Kosher Baker Paula Shoyer Photos by Michael Bennett Kress Sterling, 2014 222 pages, $35 ISBN:978-1-4549-0714-5 Your reviewer is admittedly a non-baker. However, Paula Shoyer, a former attorney, author of the very successful The Kosher Baker (2010) and now...

Food, Family and Tradition Hungarian Kosher Family Recipes and Remembrances Lynn Kirsche Shapiro The Cherry Press, 2014 279 pages, $35 ISBN: 978-0-9898479-0-2 As the “2,000 Year Old Man,” Mel Brooks, used to say “Oy, I love a nectarine; half a plum, half a peach, not...