By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist
Holocaust
Helga’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp by Helga Weiss (Norton, cloth, $24.95). What makes this Holocaust memoir different than others is that the author’s diary survived the Shoah. A quick thinking 15-year-old, she lied about her age when she and her mother were deported from Terezìn to Auschwitz. She survived Auschwitz, the labor camp at Flossburg, and a forced march to Mauthausen, and was one of only 100 children alive after the war of the 15,000 sent originally from Terezìn to Auschwitz. She gave her diary — some stapled-together paper — to an uncle working in the offices at Terezìn and was able to reclaim and complete it after the war. The book includes reproductions of some of her illustrations she made at that time.
The Boxer’s Story by Nathan Shapow (Biteback, cloth, 24.95). Shapow was a professional boxer, and a champion of his sport in Riga, Latvia, when the Nazi invasion ended his career. He experienced a different kind of fight in the ghetto and the work camps. Miraculously, he survived and went to Palestine to help form the Jewish State and now lives in the U.S. It’s an exciting story told with the help of journalist Bob Harris.
Fiction
Savage Coast, by Muriel Rukeyser (The Feminist Press, paper, $16.95). In her long literary career, Rukeyser was much better known as a poet and a political activist, but she started working as a journalist at age 21 and at 23 she found herself in Barcelona during the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. She was already a published poet in the U.S., but her editor severely rejected her novel and she never wrote fiction again. As a novel, brought to us here only slightly edited and posthumously, “Savage Coast” doesn’t work that well, although the language has some beautiful, poetic components. It rates high, however, in witnessing history as Rukeyser’s protagonist, the young journalist Helen, describes the war from the perspective of someone on the ground and also captures some social norms of that time that now seem quaint. The introductory essay by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein will enhance the reader’s appreciation of the work.
The Canvas, by Benjamin Stein (Open Letter, paper, $16.95). This wonderfully intriguing double novel is two books in one, beginning at either end of the volume and coming together in the middle. Is it possible to lose your memory so completely that you don’t recall your own heinous deeds of the past? Jan Weschler, an observant Jew living in Munich, receives a mysterious delivery one Shabbat that causes his life to unravel. On the other side is Amnon Zichroni, a young man from ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim, who is sent away to school when his parents catch him reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Whether you read each section separately, or go back and forth between stories, you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering when and how the two men’s stories will intersect.
The Geneva Option, by Adam Lebor (Bourbon Street, paper, $14.99). This is a pretty traditional spy thriller, put together with a high level of political knowledge from a political journalist and author with numerous non-fiction books to his credit. In what promises to be the first in a series featuring Israeli UN employee Yael Azoulay, we meet this special operative who has to unravel some secret and ugly UN dealings in Africa in order to get her job back.
Memoir
Now They Tell Me: 50 Life Lessons I Didn’t Learn in School, by Ed Harris (Fifty Tales, paper, $12). JTNews columnist Ed Harris, a former technology entrepreneur, has been busy cranking out fiction and non-fiction these past few years, and as you read this review his newest book is probably available for purchase. In “Now They Tell Me,” Ed shares short chapters on lessons gleaned from life, and, as the title implies, not what he learned in school. Truisms are often not true, he’s discovered, while falsisms (yes, it’s a word!) might be. Whether you agree with him or not, Ed is always entertaining.
The Rabbi and the Nuns, by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD (Mekor, cloth, $19.99). A descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, and an Orthodox rabbi and a psychiatrist, Rabbi Twerski has written over 60 books, many of them on the subject of addiction and self-help. Here he turns to stories from his own life, focusing entertainingly on his 20 years as director of the department of psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital, a Catholic hospital in Pittsburgh. A man who walks between many worlds, Twerski brings an interesting and bemused world view to all that he does.
Standing Up: Memoir of a Funny (Not Always) Life, by Marion Grodin (Center Street, cloth, $23). Based on a little YouTube sampling, Marion Grodin is quite funny on stage, but while there are funny stories in this memoir, she also shares many of her life’s bleakest moments: Her drug and alcohol addictions, her failed marriage, her mother’s death, and her breast cancer diagnosis. A fast and absorbing read, we learn that the stabilizing force and supporting foundation in her life has been her father, actor Charles Grodin.
Survival Lessons, by Alice Hoffman (Algonquin, cloth, $13.95). This little book is a treasure of wisdom that this author of 23 adult and young adult novels gleaned from cancer treatment, and an appreciation of all the survivors she has known. She helps us see that “our lives are made up of equal parts of sorrow and joy, and it is impossible to have one without the other.”
Holidays
Passover Parodies: Short Plays for the Seder Table, by Shoshana Hantman (Sidney Books, paper, $15). Only two more months till Passover, folks, but that should be enough time to get this book and start learning your parts for the play you and your family or friends are going to perform at your seder! Here you’ll find amusing riffs on Pesach themes in the styles of Shakespeare, Harry Potter, “The Lambshank Redemption,” Broadway musical and many more. (Try, “something that’s bloody/something that’s muddy/something for everyone/a plague for every night” to “Comedy Tonight.)
Non-Fiction
Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism, by Gil Troy (Oxford, cloth, $29.95). On Nov. 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism. Afterward, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made a famous speech” “The United States rises to declare…it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” Presidential historian Gil Troy examines this historic moment in great depth, calling it the start of a more confrontational, national-interest-driven foreign policy and a moment that marked a rise of neo-conservatism in American politics. Moynihan lost his job, but gained a U.S. Senate seat while American Jews responded enthusiastically in support of Israel.