Category: Jewish History

June 22, 2010

Martyr’s Crossing, by Amy Wilentz ** (of 4)

Not great writing, but very informative about the checkpoints in Middle East before the Second Intifada made them even worse.

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June 21, 2010

The Lost: A search for six of six million, by Daniel Mendelsohn **** (of 4)

Nearly sixty years after the author’s great-uncle, wife, and four daughters disappeared in the Holocaust, the author searches for their memories. Beginning with his grandfather’s...

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June 21, 2010

Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction by Martin Gilbert *** (of 4)

A fluky book by on the of the world’s greatest Holocaust historians. Gilbert gathers dozens of newly uncovered personal histories of November 10, 1938 when...

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June 21, 2010

A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua **** (of 4)

The year is 999. European Christians are awaiting the return of the Messiah. Ben Attar a Jewish Moroccan trader packs a ship with his desert...

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June 21, 2010

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon ** (of 4)

Subtitled “Jews with Swords,” Chabon writes an adventure story of a pair of Jewish adventurers in the year 995: one from Frankish Europe and another...

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June 21, 2010

The Genizah at the House of Shepher by Tamar Yellin ** (of 4)

A British literature professor returns to her ancestor’s home in Jerusalem to uncover the story of her family and unravel the mystery of ancient Hebrew...

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June 21, 2010

Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz by Jan T. Gross ** (of 4)

When the handful of Poland’s original population of 3 million Jews returned from Siberia, concentration camps, or from hiding to reclaim their property and their...

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June 21, 2010

Crabwalk by Gunter Gras *** (of 4)

A slow, intelligent, patient novel I listened to on tape about how three generations of Germans relate to Nazis. The central theme is the sinking...

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June 21, 2010

The Coffee Trader by David Liss *** (of 4)

A Jewish escapee from the Spanish Inquisition makes his living on the Amsterdam stock market, where shrewd trading skills run up to the border of...

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June 21, 2010

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak **** (of 4)

The character of Death narrates the story of Liesel Meminger, abandoned, nine-year-old daughter of a communist, who escapes death’s grasp during WWII in the German...

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