Jewish News

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 increasingly tested in a challenging and chilling environment from without and within, while accomplishing so much [...]

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 grew up in Virginia Beach. His latest book, Violins of Hope, is a unique [...]

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 research. It allows illuminating, though painful entry into the essential contribution of horrific proportions [...]

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 Israel. So too, does Avi Melamed have cause to regret the ignorance of senior officials when [...]

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 skills in her New York Times bestseller, Area 51. Her latest book, Operation Paperclip, ought to be a bestseller [...]

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 Republicans, as well as Democrats. He was once described as being more pro-Israel than the Israelis; others [...]

Nathan’s Famous: The First Hundred Years William Handwerker with Jayne A. Pearl Morgan James, 2016 192 pages, $17.95 Paper Famous Nathan Lloyd Handwerker and Gil Reavill Flatiron Books, 2016 306 pages, $26.99 As a child growing up in New York during the Great Depression, i experienced no hardships; my father had a steady position and [...]

The Seven Good Years: A Memoir Etgar Keret Riverhead Books, Penguin Random House, 2015 171 pages, $26.95  Last spring, Etgar Keret’s The Seven Good Years, appeared in my mailbox. The cover and press release promised a fun read, so i gave it a try. After the first story (all of three and a quarter pages), [...]

The Morning They Came For Us (Dispatches From Syria) Janine Di Giovanni New York: Liveright Publishing 206 pages, $25.95 The Morning They Came For Us is an important book with lasting consequence by author Janine Di Giovanni, award-winning (including two Amnesty International Awards) foreign correspondent and Newsweek’s Middle East editor. She expertly captures the near [...]

A Rage For Order—The Middle East in Turmoil: From Tahrir Square to ISIS Robert F. Worth Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016 259 pages, $26 ISBN978-0-374-25294-6 When Robert Kaplan published his collection of articles, Balkan Ghosts, in 1995, it was immediately recognized to be more than a survey, more than a travelogue and more than a [...]