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His Father, The Communist

A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father By David Maraniss Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $28 As a biographer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss has trained his eye on U.S. presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and sports icons (Roberto Clemente and Vince Lombardi). In “A Good American Family,” he burrows…

A Holocaust Art Exhibit Was Vandalized, Again And Again. But Vienna Is Fighting Back.

On the night of Sunday, May 26, a public art installation in Vienna featuring portraits of Holocaust survivors was slashed with a knife by an unknown assailant. It wasn’t the first time. The installation by the German-Italian artist Luigi Toscana, called “Lest We Forget,” includes 70 blown-up photographs of survivors printed on eight-by-five foot weather-proof…

The Secret Jewish History Of The Happy Meal

In June of 1979, 40 years ago, the world of picky eaters experienced a total game changer. That month, McDonald’s went national with a cardboard clutch containing a choice of hamburger or cheeseburger, a small drink, cookies, a small bag of fries and — of course — a toy. The Happy Meal, like the fast…

From ‘The Black Dahlia’ To ‘Tulip Fever,’ Are Flower-Based Films Doomed To Fail?

In 1637, a craze for hybrid tulips brought the Dutch economy to its knees. The flowers were overvalued, creating the first speculative bubble on record. The phenomenon, called “Tulip Mania,” ended in financial ruin for many. Some 380 years later, a film called “Tulip Fever,” set during Tulip Mania and produced by Harvey Weinstein, also…

The Secret Jewish History Of Walt Whitman

The poet Walt Whitman, whose bicentenary is on May 31, found universal inspiration in all Americans, including Jews. As a young journalist and newspaper editor in March 1842, he wrote in “The New York Aurora” under the headline “The More the Merrier”: “Our Jewish citizens have lately taken quite a fancy to The Aurora. They…

Netflix ‘Roasted’ Anne Frank. They Could Have Left Hitler’s Genitals Out Of It.

Sure, you can poke fun at Anne Frank. But it may be a mistake to do so by joking about Hitler’s testicles. That’s the approach that comedian Jeff Ross takes in the “Anne Frank” episode of his new Netflix series “Historical Roasts,” in which historical figures take the stage in order to be lampooned by…