Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen
By the time she was 3 years old, Jazz Jennings (not her original first name or her real last name) knew she was meant to be a girl. In her new book Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teenager, Jazz tells her story, including how she and her family became reality TV stars and outspoken advocates for transgender rights.
A Seat at the Table
"A Seat at the Table" is a metaphor for the Chassidic adage that no matter what one has done to stray from the teachings of Torah he or she will not be abandoned by their family. This is similar to the sentiment expressed in Robert Frost's poem, "Death of the Hired Man": "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Mr. Zeitchik, a minor character, sets the tone when he says "... a story is never just a story". The author, Joshua Halberstam, used that statement as a lead-in to employ the literary device, "a story within a story". That is where the inner story often has symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story.
Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet
Constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen’s new biography Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet coincides with the 100th anniversary of the confirmation of America’s first Jewish Supreme Court justice.
Homesick: A Novel
If you appreciate the literary style and works of Amos Oz you will enjoy Homesick by Eshkol Nevo. The narrative's locale is Mevasseret, a suburb of Jerusalem. In 1947 it was abandoned by the Arabs who were fearful of suffering the same fate as the Arabs massacred at Deir Yassin. It was the fall of 1995, Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated and there were ongoing hostilities in Lebanon. The principal characters all resided in or were in some way connected to Mevasseret.
Leaving Lucy Pear
Award-winning novelist Anna Solomon’s second novel Leaving Lucy Pear, now out in paperback, is a masterfully woven web of ambition and lies.
The Debt of Tamar
The Debt of Tamar, a self-published online sensation picked up by St. Martin’s Press in 2015, is a Nicholas Sparks-esque pastiche of fated love, hereditary burdens, and international flair. Spanning centuries from an auto-da-fé in Portugal to Nazi-occupied Paris to modern-day Istanbul and New York, Nicole Dweck’s vivid descriptions of iconic cities and idealized characters make for an enjoyable read.
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964
To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Zachary Leader, professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton, has published the first of a two-volume definitive biography.
American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
In American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest (HarperCollins), award-winning author Hannah Nordhaus treats us to a genealogical detective story that combines memoir, cultural history, and ghost hunting in her quest to discover the truth about her great great-great-grandmother.
The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Bible Passages
The Bible continues to be the best-selling book in history, perhaps because each reader can identify with some aspect of its ancient text. It is this notion that informs the essays of the 24 novelists, poets, scholars, and journalists who answered Andrew Blauner’s call to write an essay centered on a Biblical book or passage with personal meaning to them.
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story
Matti Friedman was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces at 20, along with 19 other young recruits, and sent to a border outpost in Lebanon called Pumpkin Hill, which he describes as “a forgotten little corner of a forgotten little war.” Israeli casualties of Hezbollah guerilla attacks were code-named “flowers,” hence the title of his new book, Pumpkinflowers A Soldier’s Story (Algonquin Books, 2016).