The Sea Beach Line Ben Nadler Fig Tree Books, 2015 224 pages, $15.95 Author Ben Nadler has created a novel steeped in Judaica, yet a mystery. Izzy Edel, not quite wasted on drugs, determines to search for his father, reported deceased, but possibly alive. What follows...
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A refreshing, erotic and honest collection
The Greatest Jewish-American Lover in Hungarian History Michael Blumenthal Etruscan Press, 2014 218 pages Michael Blumenthal has been called “one of the natural poets of his generation” by no less than the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, a winner of the Nobel Prize in...
Cartoons, The New Yorker and a memoir all in one
How About Never Is Never Good For You? My Life in Cartoons Bob Mankoff Henry Holt and Company 285pp, $32 ISBN 978-0-8050-9591-3 Cartoon: Three men: Man on the left is wearing a deerstalker (yes, deerstalker) hat; man on the right is an older man; man in the middle is...
Briefly Reviewed: What I have been reading this summer
The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War Steven Pressfield Sentinel (Penguin), 2014 426pp., $18.00 (paper) ISBN 978-1-59523-119-2 Forgiving Maximo Rothman A.J. Sidransky Berwick Court (Chicago), 2013 306pp., $16.95 ISBN 978-0-9889540-0-7 The Pawnbroker...
Two books in one
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...
Summertime, and the reading is easy
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...
Local author demonstrates courage
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.,...
No practical solutions
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...
A compelling view of Israel
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...
Illustrated by a Portsmouth native
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...
Don’t pass on this one
Passing in Review 30 Years of Literary Criticism and Articles from Jewish News of Southeastern Virginia Hal Sacks Edited by Terri Denison Parke Press, 2015 248 pages, ISBN 978-0-9883969-6-8 Hal Sacks knows a lot—about a lot of things. This local treasure of a...
A documentation of events surrounding the Nazi pogroms
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...
Hal’s Navy
Cdr. Harold H. Sacks, USN (ret) Parke Press 2013 220 pages $19.95 (paper) ISBN 978-0-9883969-3-7 Baby boomers and pop culture fans may remember a hit sitcom that ABC aired in the 1960s— McHale’s Navy. The series, which ran for four years, was filmed in black and white...
Profound differences highlighted
The Smarter Bomb Women and Children as Suicide Bombers Anat Berko Rowman & Littlefield, 2012 196 pages, $45.00 ISBN 978-1-4422-1952-6 After some “light” reading, your reviewer tackled a rather grim subject, one which exposes the exploitation of women and children...
A story for young girls
Call Me Oklahoma! Miriam Glassman Holiday House, 2013 123 pages, $16.95 ISBN 978-0-8234-2742-0 Call Me Oklahoma is an amazing fictional book written in a “young” and easy to understand language; clearly by an author who is familiar with the life of girls. I recommend...
Historical account
The Hunger Angel (A Novel) Herta Muller, translated by Philip Boehm Metropolitan Books, 2012 290 pages, $26 Author Herta Muller, the 2009 Nobel Laureate in literature, is a native of Romania who lives in Berlin, Germany. Her latest book, The Hunger Angel, was first...
Can man conquer geography?
The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate Robert D. Kaplan Random House, 2012 403 pages, $28.00 ISBN 978-1-4000-6983-5 Those familiar with the work of journalist/scholar Robert Kaplan are accustomed to his rich...
Poet honored by Holocaust Commission
Tapestry (Poems Woven from the Threads of Life) Mary Braford Martin Poetica Publishing Company, 2013 30 pages, $15 This is gifted poet Mary Martin’s first published book of verse, an inspiring debut honoring the language of the heart—and Martin’s heart is an embracing...
No simple explanation
A Small Town Near Auschwitz Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust Mary Fulbrook Oxford University Press, 2012 421 pages, $34.95 ISBN 978-0-19-960330-5 We have chosen to pair this review with the one by Professor Frederick Lubich as they represent a more recent genre of...
Haunting memoir
The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood Ursula Mahlendorf University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2009 365 pages, $21.95 (paper) ISBN 978-0-03448-5 Ursula Mahlendorf has been teaching for more than 40 years, most of them as a professor of...
Briefly Noted: Summer Reading Especially for Baseball Fans
Is This a Great Game, or What? Tim Kurkjian St. Martin’s Press, 2007 255 pages, $24.95 ISBN-10:0-312-36223-4 ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian autographed his book: “Hal, to a great Jewish Commander, and a lifelong Yankee fan.” For that alone one is compelled to recommend it,...
Examining an evolving field
Flourishing In the Later Years (Jewish Pastoral Insights On Senior Residential Care) by Rabbi James R. Michaels and Rabbi Cary Kozberg Mazo Publishers, 2012 297 pages This second edition—the first one was published in 2009—proves that Flourishing In the Later Years is...
Heavy theme
The Sonderberg Case Elie Wiesel Translated from the French by Catherine Temerson Alfred A. Knoff, 2010 178 pages, $25 With more than 50 books to his illustrious credit, Elie Wiesel, who prefers to write in French and have his work translated, continues to bless us at...
A reconstruction
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power Andrew Nagorski Simon and Schuster, 2012 383 pages, $28 ISBN 978-1-4391-9100-2 Readers who were gripped by Eric Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, a brilliant portrayal of events in Berlin during the 1933–1937...
Double Chai for the Shoah
Contemporary Jewish Writing, Holocaust Edition Michael Mahgerefteh, editor-in-chief Poetica Magazine, 2012, Pp. 55 This second collection of Holocaust poetry by Poetica Magazine is ample proof that the Shoah as a theme for reflection and contemplation is an...
A real life detective story
Never Forgotten The Search and Discovery of Israel’s Lost Submarine Dakar David W. Jourdan U.S. Naval Institute, 2009 248 pages, $34.95 ISBN: 978-1-59114-418-2 1968 was a bad year for submarines, the worst since WWII. The K129, a Soviet Ballistic Missile sub sank in...
At what cost?
What Money Can’t Buy The Moral Limits of Markets Michael J. Sandel Farrar, Strauss, and Girouz 2012 244 Pages, $27 ISBN 978-0-374-20303-0 Michael Sandel is a charismatic political philosopher and professor of government at Harvard. His course, Justice, has been taken...
An inspirational view on a Seder
In Every Generation: The JDC Haggadah Edited by Linda Levi and Ilana Stern Kabak Devora Publishing, 2010 92 pages, $19.95 (paper) ISBN 978-1-936068-13 In my youth there was only one kind of haggadah, the kind that was free, distributed by either the Maxwell House...
From a prolific writer
The Pope’s Jews The Vatican’s Secret Plan to Save Jews from the Nazis Gordon Thomas St. Martin’s Press, 2012 314 pages, $27.99 ISBN 978-0-318-60421-9 The late Pope, John Paul II, despite his significant efforts to reach out to world Jewry, was roundly criticized for...
A kind of Viennese “Downton Abbey”
The Hare with the Amber Eyes Edmund de Waal Picador Books, 2010 354 pages, $16.00 (paper) ISBN 978-0-312-56937-2 This powerful family history was a best seller a little over a year ago; its appearance in paperback prompted a reread. Your reviewer, believing this...
Jews and the Civil War (A Reader)
Jews and the Civil War (A Reader) Edited by Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn New York University Press, 2010 435 pages April 12, 2011 marked the 150th year anniversary of the Civil War, with the attack on Ft. Sumter triggering the bloodiest internal conflict ever...
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Captain Witold Pilecki Translated by Jarek Garlinski Aquila Polonica Publishing, 2012 460 pages, $34.95(paper) ISBN 978-1-60772-010-2 We have been reviewing Holocaust literature for the Jewish News for 29 years; survivor...