An extraordinary yearning to understand a father’s life
A Polish Jewish immigrant from a large Hasidic clan in Warsaw, Eli Tannen led a sometimes difficult, decidedly nonlinear life.
Is it time to start taking beauty pageants seriously?
“In reality, the history of pageants mirrors the many monumental changes related to a woman’s place in society.”
50 shades of unconditional longing in a tale of erotic obsession
Daphne Merkin’s “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love” is an erotic, metafictional tale of female submission.
What Trump (and Masha Gessen) can teach us about autocracy
For Masha Gessen, the Moscow-born author and Vladimir Putin’s biographer, Trump is an aspiring autocrat.
Philip Roth’s ‘terrible gift of intimacy’
Roth could seem to be “a beguiling but remote citadel: august, many-towered, lavishly defended.” Benjamin Taylor knew him better.
The suicide epidemic of World War II
In Demmin, a town of just 15,000, as many as 1,000 people took their own lives.
After the Holocaust, incalculable losses and jaw-dropping discoveries
With generosity and empathy, Hadley Freeman retells a fascinating family history.
At 99, a survivor tells his daring tale of heroism
“Our protagonist, Justus Rosenberg, is a risk-taker, and his first-hand account of the Nazi hysteria is gripping.”
In Amsterdam, borne back ceaselessly into a Jewish past
“House on Endless Waters” is an intensely clever literary construction that never compromises readability.
From Treblinka, a story of anguish and healing
For Diana Wichtel, facing the past felt superior to running from it.