ON TYRANNY: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century By Timothy Snyder Tim Duggan Books. 128 pp. $7.19 Out of boredom, a shepherd boy, calls to the adults in his village to tell them that a wolf is chasing his flock of sheep. When the villagers arrive to help the boy, they find no wolf, because…
This article originally appeared on Plus61J. If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. —Lao Tzu I believe it is true that, at least in our thoughts, past, present, and future converge…
On a brisk December night, a crowd gathered into the Center for Jewish History anticipating the launch of an exciting new book. “Have I Got a Story for You” translated 42 astonishing Yiddish stories into English for the first time. The touching collection of Yiddish stories intertwined the old world and the new, traditional and…
Although Joseph Roth’s “The Hotel Years” first appeared in 2015, the beginning of 2017 seems, unfortunately, to be the perfect time to open the text. The book is a collection of short pieces that Roth, one of the preeminent journalists of his time (at one point, the Frankfurter Zeitung was paying him at the staggering…
As I was perusing the New York Times book reviews this weekend (yes, the section whose cover features a review by Woody Allen), I happened upon an interview with French-Jewish writer and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy. As someone with an above-average interest in French and Jewish (I’ve got a doctorate in just that topic, and…
Richard Spencer, inventor of the term “alt-right” is leading Nazi salutes. Cadillac is recruiting “neo-Nazis” for a commercial. And now provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos signing a book deal worth $250,000. Yiannopoulos identified himself early on with the “alt-right,” but more with the folks who disdain what they call “political correctness” than with the ones who use…
Earlier today, the LA Review of Books published an interview with Jewish book cover designer, Peter Mendelsund. Even if you don’t recognize the name, if you’re a reader you’ve almost certainly seen his work. Among other projects, Mendelsund has redesigned covers from the back catalogs of such notable authors as Franz Kafka, Simone De Beauvoir,…
It’s struck me lately that the American writer perhaps most deeply associated with White Male Writer-ness is one who made his name writing fiction about identity. Google “Philip Roth” and “white male” and you find an endless stream of essays that offer up Roth as a prime example of the white male literary novelist. As…
— The celebrated novelist Etgar Keret said he refrains from publishing some of his works in Hebrew to protect the privacy of his family, upon whom he bases some of his writing. Keret, who in 1996 received Israel’s Prime Minister Award for Literature, among other distinctions, revealed this during a talk last week before Russian…
Samantha Bee offers up the not-implausible possibility that Donald Trump can’t read. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post has the scoop on a novel Trump had gotten ghostwritten, but that no longer bears his byline. It’s “an incredibly sexist novel,” according to HuffPo’s Todd Van Luling. Were we expecting it to be any other kind? Phoebe Maltz…
We’ve always known President Obama is, at heart, a lovable nerd. Soon we’ll get even more proof; the president guest-edited the November edition of WIRED, which the magazine’s editor in chief Scott Dadich recently wrote will be focused on frontiers, including “the final one, because it turns out President Obama is a big Star Trek…
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