How a Jewish spy infiltrated the U.S. atomic program — and helped the Soviet Union build the bomb
George Koval was an Iowa-born descendant of Russian Jews, fluent in multiple languages, a lover of Walt Whitman, American baseball and Communism.
Ravaged by Alzheimer’s, a star professor tries to remember how to love
Joshua Henkin’s “Morningside Heights,” is a poignant entry in the early-onset Alzheimer’s canon, intimately exploring the ravages of the disease.
A Holocaust story of incredible luck, breathtaking bravery and incalculable loss
“My Name Is Selma” tells of a woman who took great risks and suffered greatly, too — but whose luck, cleverness and resilience saw her through.
After Kristallnacht, a hunger artist confronts a splintering world
Largely ignored in its time, Ulrich Boschwitz’s 1939 novel “The Passenger” is a fascinating historical document.
As in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ small disasters foretell the destruction of a world
Yaniv Iczkovits’ prizewinning Israeli novel, “The Slaughterman’s Daughter,” takes its place among the classics of Jewish literature.
Digging into Holocaust history and finding a sort of gold
In ‘Plunder,’ Menachem Kaiser distrusts and deconstructs the third-generation Holocaust memoir.
Who murdered a Nazi fugitive — and does the answer actually matter?
In “The Ratline,” author and documentarian Philippe Sands probes the life and death of Otto Gustav von Wächter.
In Jerusalem, where lives intersect thrillingly — and sometimes violently
Rebecca Sacks’ ambitious debut novel ‘City of a Thousand Gates’ features a cast of 32 Israelis and Palestinians.
Long after the Kindertransport, the trauma remained
Jonathan Lichtenstein’s memoir “The Berlin Shadow” argues that the legacy of the Kindertransport rippled through the next generations.
After the Holocaust, displaced by indifference and paralysis
In David Nasaw’s “The Last Million,” the plight of Jewish refugees in DP camps offers a warning about the troubling aftermath of war.