This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Books Reason and Religion Converge in ‘The Mathematician’s Shiva’
The Mathematician’s Shiva By Stuart Rojstaczer Penguin Books, 384 pages, $16.00 Sasha Karnokovitch, narrator of the novel “The Mathematician’s Shiva,” isn’t the warmest of storytellers. Born in Russia at the height of the Cold War to two brilliant mathematicians, Sasha has eschewed the cold Wisconsin town where he came of age in favor of a…
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Books Leonard Maltin’s Last Movie Guide
The word is out. Leonard Maltin’s annual movie guide has fallen into what, in Hollywood speak, would be called “developmental hell.” First published in 1969 and annually since 1986, the new 2015 edition is its last. Like newspapers and other print media, it has fallen victim to the Internet, where much of the information is…
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Books The Clothes We Carried
Musician Rosanne Cash reminisces about a purple shirt that once belonged to her legendary father. Designer Cynthia Rowley rhapsodizes about the Girl Scouts sash that helped ignite her entrepreneurial spark. And an octogenarian Holocaust survivor named Dorothy Finger shares memories of a suit made with a bolt of cloth she took from her childhood home…
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Books YA Romance and ‘Hasidsploitation’
Like No Other By Una Lamarche Razorbill, 352 pages, $17.99 In her new young adult novel, “Like No Other,” author Una Lamarche explores the racial and religious tensions in Crown Heights through the chance encounter of a West Indian boy and a Hasidic girl and the relationship that blossoms between the two. When a hurricane…
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Books New York Exhibit on Children’s Books Highlights Many Jewish Contributions
‘It’s a pattern really. So many of the progressive writers and illustrators of children’s books were Jews,” says Leonard Marcus, who does not usually concern himself with the old parlor game of counting famous Jews. Marcus is curator of the New York Public Library’s exhibit on children’s literature, “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books…
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Books Heart as Tender as Brisket
A version of this story first appeared on Women’s Voices for Change. The best comic novel I’ve read this year wasn’t published by Random House or Penguin. It was self-published by Philadelphia writer Stacia Friedman. The title? “Tender is the Brisket.” Does the book live up to the comic promise of that title? Absolutely. Ruth…
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Books Now You Can Call Ishmael, To Talk About Books
“Call me Ishmael,” declares one of the most famous opening sentences in Western literature. But what if the narrator of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” was actually asking you to call him? That was the whimsical thought Logan Smalley offered in a spirited bar conversation about notable first sentences. He jotted the notion down on a…
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Books Joan Rivers Storms Out of CNN Interview
Apparently all that plastic surgery didn’t give Joan Rivers a thick skin. On July 5, Joan Rivers made headlines after she stormed out of a CNN interview claiming the anchor, Fredricka Whitfield, was asking increasingly “negative questions.” Rivers, known for her (sometimes) off-color jokes has picked on everyone from Paula Deen to the Jennifer Lawrence….
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Opinion In Bruce Springsteen’s new anti-ICE protest song, a nod to Minnesota’s own Bob Dylan
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Holy Ground A millennial rabbi built a synagogue where others have closed. Her maverick ideas are becoming a model.
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News What We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Childhood
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Fast Forward Chabad ‘let me down,’ suspect said, in hours before allegedly attacking their headquarters
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Opinion A death knell for the American Jewish dream of a melting pot — in the 1920s, and today
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News Antisemitism group keeps board member who emailed Epstein on the legality of transporting minors for sex
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Fast Forward Mamdani appoints Phylisa Wisdom, progressive Jewish leader, to run Office to Combat Antisemitism
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