MyJewishBooks Online

Our Shelves
Click a Heading to
see our selections

SUMMER 2021 BOOK SUGGESTIONS

Home

WHAT'S NEW?
Summer 2021
Spring 2021
Winter 2021
Fall 2020
Summer 2020
Spring 2020
Winter 2020
Fall 2019
Summer 2019
Spring 2019
Winter 2019
Fall 2018
Summer 2018
Spring 2018
Winter 2018
Fall 2017
Summer 2017
Spring 2017
Winter 2017

Welcome to MyJewishBooks.com Summer 2021 Suggestions

OUR JUNE 2021 UPDATE
Some SUMMER 2021 Book Releases/Recommendations Below

Be sure to visit our other pages for releases during the past SPRING 2021,
releases during the past WINTER 2021,
releases during the past Fall 2020,
releases for Summer 2020,
releases for Spring 2020,
releases for Winter 2020,
releases for Autumn 2019,
or browse all the rest of our pages (oFrah, Passover, Hanukkah, MLK books, Tu b'shvat books, and more).

MAZEL TOV TO THE WINNERS OF THE 2020 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS. CLICK HERE FOR A LIST OF WINNERS AND FINALISTS and links to book covers and readings

That Summer:
A Novel
Part 2 in the Cape Cod Trilogy
by Jennifer Weiner
(pronounced whiner) May 11, 2021
Altria Books

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Summer comes another timely and deliciously twisty novel of intrigue, secrets, and the transformative power of female friendship. Hint hint... Ms. Weiner wrote this novel during #MeToo, The Kavanaugh hearing, testifying about a rape that happened years ago during high school, and having her daughter apply for a job and remembering how Weiner's first job was filled with incidents of harassment.

Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

The Plight of Jewish Deserted Wives, 1851–1900:
A Social History of East European Agunah
by Haim Sperber
(Western Galilee College)
JUNE 1, 2021

Agunot (Agunah, sing., meaning ‘anchored’ in Hebrew) is a Jewish term describing women who cannot remarry because their husband has disappeared. According to Jewish law (Halacha) a woman can get out of the marriage only if the husband releases her by granting a divorce writ (Get), if he dies, or if his whereabouts is not known. Women whose husbands cannot be located, and who have not been granted a Get, are considered Agunot. The Agunah phenomenon was of major concern in East European Jewry and much referred to in Hebrew and Yiddish media and fiction.

Most nineteenth-century Agunot cases came from Eastern Europe, where most Jews resided (twentieth-century Agunot were primarily in North America, and will be the subject of a forthcoming book).

Seven variations of Agunot have been identified: Deserted wives; women who refused to receive, or were not granted, a Get; widowed women whose brothers-in-law refused to grant them permission to marry someone else (Halitza); women whose husbands’ remains were not found; improperly or incorrectly written Gets; women whose husbands became mentally ill and were not competent to grant a Get; women refused a Get by husbands who had converted to Christianity or Islam.

The book explores the reasons for desertion and the plight of the left-alone wife. Key is the change from a legal issue to a social one, with changing attitudes to philanthropy and public opinion at the fore of explanation. A statistical database of circa 5000 identified Agunot is to be published simultaneously in a separate companion volume.

Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal:
The Prewar and Holocaust Legacy
of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
(SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought)
Edited by Don Seeman, Daniel Reiser,
Ariel Evan Mayse
JUNE 1, 2021
SUNY PRESS

Reconsiders the legacy of an important Hasidic mystic, leader, and educator who confronted the dilemmas of modernity after World War I and whose writing constitutes a unique testimony to religious experience and its rupture in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943) was a remarkable Hasidic mystic, leader, and educator. He confronted the secularization and dislocation of Polish Jews after World War I, the failure of the traditional educational system, and the devastation of the Holocaust, in which he lost all his close family and eventually his own life.

Thanks to a new critical edition of his Warsaw Ghetto sermons, scholars have begun to reassess the relationship between Shapira’s literary and educational attainments, his prewar mysticism, and his Holocaust experience, and to reexamine the question of faith-or its collapse-in the Warsaw Ghetto. This interdisciplinary volume, the first such work devoted to a twentieth-century Hasidic leader, integrates social and intellectual history along with theological, literary, and anthropological analyses of Shapira’s legacy. It raises theoretical and methodological questions related to the study of Jewish thought and mysticism, but also contributes to contemporary conversations about topics such as spiritual renewal and radical religious experience, the literature of suffering, and perhaps most pressingly, the question of faith and meaning-or their rupture-in the wake of genocide.

YEARBOOK
Essays by
SETH ROGEN
May 11, 2021
Crown

A collection of funny personal essays from one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express and one of the producers of The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, and The Boys. (All of these words have been added to help this book show up in people’s searches using the wonders of algorithmic technology. Thanks for bearing with us!) Hi! I’m Seth! I was asked to describe my book, Yearbook, for the inside flap (which is a gross phrase) and for websites and shit like that, so… here it goes!!!

Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the first one.”)

I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day.

I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don’t enjoy it, I’m sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I’ll do my best to make it up to you.

Florence Adler Swims Forever:
A Novel
by Rachel Beanland
JUNE 1, 2021
NOW IN PAPERBACK FOR SUMMER 2021
SIMON & SCHUSTER

“The perfect summer read” (USA TODAY) begins with a shocking tragedy that results in three generations of the Adler family grappling with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets over the course of one summer.

*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice * One of USA TODAY’s “Best Books of 2020” * One of Good Morning America’s “25 Novels You'll Want to Read This Summer” * One of Parade’s “26 Best Books to Read This Summer”

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home.

Now, Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams.

Esther only wants to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there’s Fannie’s risky pregnancy—not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac—and the fact that the handsome heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence.

When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth—at least until Fannie’s baby is born—and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal.

“Readers of Emma Straub and Curtis Sittenfeld will devour this richly drawn debut family saga” (Library Journal) that’s based on a true story and is a breathtaking portrayal of how the human spirit can endure—and even thrive—after tragedy.

Lament for a Father:
The Journey to Understanding
and Forgiveness
by Marvin Olasky
(Elder, Presbyterian Church of America)
JUNE 1, 2021
c Marvin played catch with his father, Eli Olasky, only once – it didn't end well.

Eli never laughed, rarely spoke with his son, and was periodically lambasted by his wife for his lack of ambition. How had a Harvard graduate failed to achieve all that he had once hoped for?

Now an experienced investigative journalist, Marvin Olasky uncovers the true story of his father's past in his most personal work to date--facing Eli's pain and his own in order to understand and forgive. He follows Eli from his Orthodox Jewish childhood in Boston to his days as a commuter student at Harvard to his traumatic experiences in Germany following World War II to his embrace of Reconstructionist Judaism, describing a "spiritual and psychological death by one thousand cuts"--and discovering what he owes to his parents.

The Girls in the Attic
A novel
by Marius Gabriel
Lake Union
JUNE 1, 2021

The bestselling author of The Designer presents a sweeping story of blind faith, family allegiance and how love makes one man question everything he thought he knew.

Max Wolff is a committed soldier of the Reich. So when he is sent home wounded, only to discover that his mother is sheltering two young Jewish women in their home, he is outraged.

His mother’s act of mercy is a gross betrayal of everything Max stands for. He has dedicated his life to Nazism, fighting to atone for the shame of his anti-Hitler father’s imprisonment. It’s his duty to turn the sisters over to the Gestapo. But he hesitates, and the longer Max fails to do his duty, the harder it becomes.

When Allied bombers fill the skies of Germany, Max is forced to abandon all dogma and face the brutality of war in order to defend precious lives. But what will it cost him?

NOW IN PAPERBACK

Today Tonight Tomorrow
by Rachel Lynn Solomon
A YA NOVEL
JUNE 1, 2021
SIMON & SCHUSTER

Today, she hates him.

It’s the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been bitter rivals for all of high school, clashing on test scores, student council elections, and even gym class pull-up contests. While Rowan, who secretly wants to write romance novels, is anxious about the future, she’d love to beat her infuriating nemesis one last time.

Tonight, she puts up with him.

When Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. But after learning a group of seniors is out to get them, she and Neil reluctantly decide to team up until they’re the last players left—and then they’ll destroy each other.

As Rowan spends more time with Neil, she realizes he’s much more than the awkward linguistics nerd she’s sparred with for the past four years. And, perhaps, this boy she claims to despise might actually be the boy of her dreams.

Tomorrow…maybe she’s already fallen for him.

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This
by Rachel Lynn Solomon
A YA NOVEL
JUNE 8, 2021
SIMON & SCHUSTER

A wedding harpist disillusioned with love and a hopeless romantic cater-waiter flirt and fight their way through a summer of weddings in this effervescent romantic comedy from the acclaimed author of Today Tonight Tomorrow.

Quinn Berkowitz and Tarek Mansour’s families have been in business together for years: Quinn’s parents are wedding planners, and Tarek’s own a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email—and then he left for college without a response.

Quinn has been dreading seeing him again almost as much as she dreads another summer playing the harp for her parents’ weddings. When he shows up at the first wedding of the summer, looking cuter than ever after a year apart, they clash immediately. Tarek’s always loved the grand gestures in weddings—the flashier, the better—while Quinn can’t see them as anything but fake. Even as they can’t seem to have one civil conversation, Quinn’s thrown together with Tarek wedding after wedding, from performing a daring cake rescue to filling in for a missing bridesmaid and groomsman.

Quinn can’t deny her feelings for him are still there, especially after she learns the truth about his silence, opens up about her own fears, and begins learning the art of harp-making from an enigmatic teacher.

Maybe love isn’t the enemy after all—and maybe allowing herself to fall is the most honest thing Quinn’s ever done.

The Wolf and the Woodsman:
A Novel
by Ava Reid
JUNE 8, 2021
HARPER VOYAGER

In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut— inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology—follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

ETHEL ROSENBERG
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
BY ANNE SEBBA
JUNE 8, 2021
ST MARTIN'S

New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world.

In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother.

This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple for more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950’s. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn’t committed, orphaning her children.

Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel’s story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.

HERE, RIGHT MATTERS
An American Story
A Memoir
Alexander S. Vindman,
Ret Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army
Harper Books
JUNE 15, 2021
MOVED TO AUGUST 3, 2021

Former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman tells the story of his childhood as a Ukranian immigrant in Brooklyn, his choice to pursue a career in service of his new home in war and at the highest levels of the National Security Council, and his decision to report the infamous phone call that led to a presidential impeachment.

0900, Thursday, July 25, 2019: President Trump called Ukraine’s President Zelensky, supposedly to congratulate him on his recent victory. In the months to follow, the American public would learn what only Alexander Vindman was courageous enough to bring to light: on that call, the President of the United States extorted a foreign ally to bring down a political challenger at home. Vindman’s actions would lead to Trump’s impeachment. It would also lead to the end of Vindman’s decorated career in the US Army, in retribution for his public testimony before Congress.

Here, Right Matters is the story of Vindman’s family, his career, and the moment of truth he faced for his nation. As an immigrant, raised by a father who fled the Soviet Union in pursuit of a better life for his children, Vindman learned about respect for truth and fact throughout his education and military training in his new home country. Speaking up about what happened on July 25th was never a choice: it was Vindman’s duty, as a naturalized citizen and member of the armed forces. And far louder than the partisan attacks he endured in the wake of his testimony was an extraordinary chorus of support from citizens who were collectively intent on reaffirming an abiding American commitment to integrity.

In the face of a sure-fire career derailment and public excoriation, Vindman heeded the lessons from the people and institutions who instilled in him the moral compass and the courage to act decisively. Like so many other American immigrant families, the Vindmans had to learn to build a life from scratch and take big risks to achieve important goals. Here, Right Matters is about the quiet heroes who keep us safe; but, above all, it is a call to arms for those of us who refuse to let America betray its true self.

Morningside Heights:
A Novel
by Joshua Henkin
JUNE 15, 2021
PANTHEON
STARRED REVIEW

A tender, powerful, and big-hearted novel about love in the face of loss, from the award-winning author of The World Without You and Matrimony

When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976 after graduating from Yale, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm. She is escaping the strict Orthodox Jewish family in Ohio. When she falls in love with Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn’t have anticipated.

Thirty years later, in 2006, something is wrong with Spence, now 57. The Great Man can’t concentrate; he falls asleep reading The New York Review of Books. It is most likely early onset Alzheimer's. With their daughter Sarah away at medical school, Pru must struggle on her own. One day, feeling particularly isolated, Pru meets a man, and the possibility of new romance blooms. Meanwhile, Spence’s estranged son from his first marriage has come back into their lives (he did spend two years with them as a teen, and loved his father and hip step mother). Arlo Zackheim, a wealthy entrepreneur who invests in biotech, may be his father’s last, best hope (his mother, was a narcissistic vagabond who left Arlo with a deep void, always seeking love.

Morningside Heights is a sweeping and compassionate novel about a marriage surviving hardship. It’s about the love between women and men and children and parents, about the things we give up in the face of adversity, about what endures when life turns out differently from what we thought we signed up for.

Holocaust Holiday:
One Family's Descent into
Genocide Memory Hell
by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Spring 2021
Wicked Son Press

Once upon a time, a father shlepped his reluctant children around Europe on a hard-charging tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in order to impress on them the profound evil of Hitler’s war against the Jews and the importance of combating genocide. In 2017, the rabbi to celebrities, Shmuley Boteach, decided to take his family on a European holiday, but not the kind made famous by National Lampoon and Chevy Chase.

But instead of seeing the sights of London or Paris, he took his reluctant — and at times complaining — children to Auschwitz, Treblinka, the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto, and many other sites associated with Hitler’s genocidal war against the Jews.

His purpose was to impressupon them the full horror of the Holocaust so they would know and remember it. In the process, he and his children learn a great deal about the scope and nature of the European genocide and the continuing effects of hatred and anti-Semitism. The resulting memoir is travelogue, memoir and history —fascinating, terrifying, frustrating, humorous, and tragic.

Day the Klan Came to Town
by Bill Campbell
Bizhan Khodabandeh (Illustrator)
P. Djeli Clark (Foreword)
JUNE 15, 2021
PM PRESS (GRAPHIC)

The time in 1923 when Jews, Catholics and others fought the Klan in suburban Pbg

The year is 1923. The Ku Klux Klan is at the height of its power in the US as membership swells into the millions and they expand beyond their original southern borders. As they grow, so do their targets. As they continue their campaigns of terror against African Americans, their list now includes Catholics and Jews, southern and eastern Europeans, all in the name of “white supremacy.” But they are no longer considered a terrorist organization. By adding the messages of moral decency, family values, and temperance, the Klan has slapped on a thin veneer of respectability and has become a “civic organization,” attracting ordinary citizens, law enforcement, and politicians to their particular brand of white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant “Americanism.”

Pennsylvania enthusiastically joined that wave. That was when the Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania decided to display the Klan’s newfound power in a show of force. He chose a small town outside of Pittsburgh named after Andrew Carnegie; a small, unassuming borough full of “Catholics and Jews,” the perfect place to teach these immigrants “a lesson.” Some thirty thousand members of the Klan gathered from as far as Kentucky for “Karnegie Day.” After initiating new members, they armed themselves with torches and guns to descend upon the town to show them exactly what Americanism was all about.

The Day the Klan Came to Town is a fictionalized retelling of the riot, focusing on a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. He is not a leader; he’s a man with a troubled past. He was pulled from the sulfur mines of Sicily as a teen to fight in the First World War. Afterward, he became the focus of a local fascist and was forced to emigrate to the United States. He doesn’t want to fight but feels that he may have no choice. The entire town needs him—and indeed everybody—to make a stand.

THESE ARE THE DEVELOPMENTS
OF THE HUMAN
BY ETHAN DANIEL DAVIDSON
JUNE 15, 2021
self published
Contact Ethan's website for a copy

These are the Developments of the Human is a fascinating compilation of wisdom and insights that Ethan Daniel Davidson captured over years of various chavrusas (study partnerships of Jewish text) with rabbis and other learners from across the world. He has studied with many people across the spectrum and was even once a student at JTS briefly.

Ethan weaves together sketches of personal anecdotes and Jewish philosophy with stories of his adventures as a lumberjack in a remote Alaskan village, his journeys sailing the world on cargo ships, and his six years on the road as a musician.

The reader is left with more questions than answers about the forces that shape our growth into adulthood, our constant personal evolution, and how we might, or might not, return “home.”

You can watch is talk at JTS on Youtube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-l7PJue_4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjmkQkL20h4

I am pretty sure you can get a copy of the book for free from the author's website. The author is the son of the late philanthropist, William Davidson of Detroit, see also William Davidson Foundation (WDF), Safaria, the Davidson Archeaological Park in Israel, the Detroit Pistons, Tampa Bay Lightning, the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at Jewish Theological Seminary, the William Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.

Girl Left Behind
by Judy Temes
Nancy Nimoy
JUNE 15, 2021

At age five, Judy Temes was living with her parents and brother in a small town near Hungary's southern border. Unlike most, the family had comforts: a roomy apartment, a television, even a vacation home. What more could anyone want? But for her father, a doctor and a survivor of the Holocaust, living among the people who stood by as his family was taken to their deaths in cattle cars had become untenable.

On a summer night in 1969, the family packed the car for what was supposed to be a vacation to Vienna. Only this was no vacation. They were escaping Hungary's totalitarian regime, using tourist visas that allowed entry into a Western country. Such visas, however, came at a high price. One child had to be left behind. This was the government's way to ensure that citizens who left the country would return.

The child left behind was "Juditka," who would go on to live with her grandmother in a tiny lakeside Hungarian village. When, if ever, would she see her family again? No one knew.

Preventable:
The Inside Story of How Leadership
Failures, Politics, and Selfishness
Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response
by Andy Slavitt
JUNE 15, 2021
St. Martin's Press

“Painfully good. The book could have been called, ‘Outrageous.’ The story Andy Slavitt tells is not just about Trump’s monumental failures but also about the deeper ones that started long before, with our health system, our politics, and more.” --Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

The definitive, behind-the-scenes look at the U.S. Coronavirus crisis from one of the most recognizable and influential voices in healthcare

From former head of Obamacare Andy Slavitt, Preventable is the definitive inside account of the United States' failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Slavitt chronicles what he saw and how much could have been prevented -- an unflinching investigation of the cultural, political, and economic drivers that led to unnecessary loss of life.

With unparalleled access to the key players throughout the government on both sides of the aisle, the principal public figures, as well as the people working on the frontline involved in fighting the virus, Slavitt brings you into the room as fateful decisions are made and focuses on the people at the center of the political system, health care system, patients, and caregivers. The story that emerges is one of a country in which -- despite the heroics of many -- bad leadership, political and cultural fractures, and an unwillingness to sustain sacrifice light a fuse that is difficult to extinguish.

Written in the tradition of The Big Short, Preventable continues Andy Slavitt’s important work of addressing the uncomfortable realities that brought America to this place. And, he puts forth the solutions that will prevent us from being here again, ensuring a better, stronger country for everyone.

Inventing Latinos:
A New Story of
American Racism
by Laura E. Gómez
(UCLA, Chicano/Chicana Studies
The New Press

Jewish leaders – a must read.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR
A timely and groundbreaking argument that all Americans must grapple with Latinos' dynamic racial identity—because it impacts everything we think we know about race in America
Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gómez‚ a leading expert on race‚ law‚ and society‚ illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.

Pulling back the lens as the country approaches an unprecedented demographic shift (Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in a matter of decades‚ Gómez also reveals the nefarious roles the United States has played in Latin America—from military interventions and economic exploitation to political interference—that‚ taken together‚ have destabilized national economies to send migrants northward over the course of more than a century. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of Latinos migrate from the places most impacted by this nation's dirty deeds‚ leading Gómez to a bold call for reparations.

In this audacious effort to reframe the often-confused and misrepresented discourse over the Latinx generation‚ Gómez provides essential context for today's most pressing political and public debates—representation‚ voice‚ interpretation‚ and power—giving all of us a brilliant framework to engage cultural controversies‚ elections‚ current events‚ and more.

The Netanyahus
A Novel
by Joshua Cohen
NY Review Bks
JUNE 22, 2021

A job interview goes awry for the exiled patriarch of Israel's First Family in this novel from one of contemporary fiction's most brilliant and audacious writers.

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition.

When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics—“An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family” that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

THE VIXEN
A Novel
by Francine Prose
Harper
JUNE 29, 2021

“Francine Prose is a powerhouse. The Vixen will fascinate and complicate the histories that haunt our present moments. Like Coney Island’s Cyclone, this story tumbles and tangles a reader’s grip of reality. It’s told with the heart, humor and daring of a true artist. Prose’s Vixen is a triumph and a trip though the solid magic that books make real.”—Samantha Hunt

“A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive.”—Maria Semple

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose returns with a dazzling new novel set in the glamorous world of 1950s New York publishing, the story of a young man tasked with editing a steamy bodice-ripper based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—an assignment that will reveal the true cost of entering that seductive, dangerous new world.

It’s 1953, and Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm, has entered a glittering world of three-martini lunches, exclusive literary parties, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family in Coney Island.

But Simon’s first assignment—editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a potboiler intended to shore up the firm’s failing finances—makes him question the cost of admission. Because Simon has a secret that, at the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings, he cannot reveal: his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg’s. His parents mourn Ethel’s death.

Simon’s dilemma grows thornier when he meets The Vixen’s author, the startlingly beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. As mysteries deepen, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon’s control, he must face what he’s lost by exchanging the loving safety of his middle-class Jewish parents’ Coney Island apartment for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. Gradually Simon realizes that the people around him are not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot—and that these crises may steer him toward a brighter future.

At once domestic and political, contemporary and historic, funny and heartbreaking, enlivened by surprising plot turns and passages from Anya’s hilariously bad novel, The Vixen illuminates a period of history with eerily striking similarities to the current moment. Meanwhile it asks timeless questions: How do we balance ambition and conscience? What do social mobility and cultural assimilation require us to sacrifice? How do we develop an authentic self, discover a vocation, and learn to live with the mysteries of love, family, art, life and loss?

Linda McCartney's Family Kitchen:
Over 90 Plant-Based Recipes to
Save the Planet and Nourish the Soul
by the late Linda McCartney
Paul McCartney, Stella McCartney,
and Mary McCartney
Little, Brown
JUNE 29, 2021

Over thirty years ago, Linda McCartney first blazed the trail for meat-free cooking, and around the table of the family home in East Sussex, she shared the pleasure that eating compassionately could bring. Now Paul, Mary and Stella bring Linda's kitchen up to date, re-inventing her best-loved recipes for the plant-based cook, alongside their favorite family stories and the dishes that they now eat at home.

The original food pioneer and photographer, Linda McCartney believed in great tasting, wholesome, meat-free food, and embraced kindness and compassion in everything she did. She was raised in Scarsdale, NY (Her father was Lee (Epstein)Eastman and mother Louise Lindner). Her legacy lives on in Linda McCartney's Family Kitchen, a collection of 100 simple, fresh and inventive plant-based recipes that fit perfectly with how we want to eat now.

In Linda McCartney's Family Kitchen, Paul, Mary and Stella have re-imagined Linda's classic recipes, bringing them up to date for the modern, plant-based cook. Because how we eat is changing, with more and more people choosing a meat- and dairy-free diet, even if only for one or two days a week.

Alongside family favorites such as Pancakes, Chilled Avocado and Chili Soup, Aubergine Caponata and Shepherd's Pie, Paul, Mary and Stella share the dishes they cook most at home: Pad Thai, Pulled Jackfruit Burgers, Italian Tomato and Bread Salad and Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookies to name just a few of the simple, nourishing and sustainable recipes included in this stylish book.

Complete with personal stories and intimate family photos spanning three decades, is not only good for you, but for the planet too.

Fair Pay:
How to Get a Raise,
Close the Wage Gap,
and Build Stronger Businesses
by David Buckmaster
HarperBusiness
JUNE 29, 2021

An expert takes on the crisis of income inequality, addressing the problems with our current compensation model, demystifying pay practices, and providing practical information employees can use when negotiating their salaries and discussing how we can close the gender and racial pay gap.

American workers are suffering economically and fewer are earning a living wage. The situation is only worsening. We do not have a common language to talk about pay, how it works at most companies, or a cohesive set of practical solutions for making pay more fair. Most blame the greed of America’s executive class, the ineptitude of government, or a general lack of personal motivation.

But the negative effects of income inequality are a problem that can be solved. We don’t have to choose between effective government policy and the free market, between the working class and the job creators, or between socialism and capitalism, David Buckmaster, the Director of Global Compensation for Nike, argues. We do not have to give up on fixing what people are paid. Ideas like Universal Basic Income will not be enough to avoid the severe cultural disruption coming our way.

Buckmaster examines income inequality through the design and distribution of income itself. He explains why businesses are producing no meaningful wage growth, regardless of the unemployment rate and despite sitting on record piles of cash and the lowest tax rates[0] in a generation . He pulls back the curtain on how corporations make decisions about wages and provides practical solutions—as well as the corporate language—workers need to get the best results when talking about money with a boss.

The way pay works now will not overcome our most persistent pay challenges, including low and stagnant wages, unequal pay by race and gender, and executive pay levels untethered from the realities of the average worker. The compensation system is working as designed, but that system is broken.

Fair Pay opens the corporate black box of pay decisions to show why businesses pay what they pay and how to make them pay more.

The Cult of We:
WeWork, Adam Neumann, and
the Great Startup Delusion
by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell
JUNE 1, 2021
Crown
The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and what the company's epic unraveling exposes about Silicon Valley's delusions and the financial system's desperate hunger to cash in--from the Wall Street Journal reporters whose scoops hastened the company's downfall.

In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion--at least on paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the 6-foot-five Neumann, who grew up in part on a kibbutz, looked the part of a messianic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The vision he offered was mesmerizing: a radical reimagining of work space for a new generation, with its fluid jobs and lax office culture. He called it WeWork. Though the company was merely subleasing "amenity"-filled office space to freelancers and small startups, Neumann marketed it like a revolutionary product--and investors swooned.

As billions of funding dollars poured in, Neumann's ambitions grew limitless. WeWork wasn't just an office space provider, he boasted. It would build schools, create WeWork cities, even colonize Mars. Could he, Neumann wondered from the ice bath he'd installed in his office, become the first trillionaire or a world leader? In pursuit of its founder's grandiose vision, the company spent money faster than it could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, the CEO scoured the globe for more capital. In late 2019, just weeks before WeWork's highly publicized IPO, a Hail Mary effort to raise cash, everything fell apart. Neumann was ousted from his company--but still was poised to walk away a billionaire.

Calling to mind the recent demise of Theranos and the hubris of the dotcom era bust, WeWork's extraordinary rise and staggering implosion were fueled by disparate characters in a financial system blind to its risks, from a Japanese billionaire with designs on becoming the Warren Buffet of tech, to leaders at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who seemed intoxicated by a Silicon Valley culture where sensible business models lost out to youthful CEOs who promised "disruption." Why did some of the biggest names in banking and venture capital buy the hype? And what does the future hold for Silicon Valley "unicorns"? Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell explore these questions in this definitive account of WeWork's unraveling.

The book everyone you know will read this Summer
The cross between the Devil Wears Prada and Get Out
Will the publisher recoup its 7 figure advance?

The Other Black Girl:
A Novel
by Zakiya Dalila Harris
JUNE 1, 2021
ATRIA BOOKS

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Parade, Goodreads, Fortune, and BBC

Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace,

The Confidence Men:
How Two Prisoners of War Engineered
the Most Remarkable Escape in History
by Margalit Fox
JUNE 1, 2021
RANDOM HOUSE

The astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time.

Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp (Yozgad) during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Waters Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board—and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception—to build a trap for their captors that will ultimately lead them to freedom.

A gripping nonfiction thriller, The Confidence Men is the story of one of the only known con games played for a good cause—and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for “the Great War,” Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic on an Australian sheep ranch, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives. (The wrote books decades ago about their adventure. See The Road to En-dor (Jones) and The Spook and the Commandant (Hill).

Margalit Fox brings her “nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality” (Kathryn Schulz, New York) to this tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22.
Note: Harry Jones... not to be confused with the Harry Jones who was U.S. Consul General in Tel Aviv

The Engagement:
America's Quarter-Century Struggle
Over Same-Sex Marriage
by Sasha Issenberg
(UCLA)
JUNE 1, 2021
PANTHEON

The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States—the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage’s unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable.

It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over twenty-five years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California’s Proposition 8 and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched.

This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

How the Word Is Passed:
A Reckoning with the History of
Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith
(Atlantic Magazine)
JUNE 1, 2021
LITTLE, BROWN

You probably know poet/writer Clint Smith for his poem about the Cicada and the Black Boy, on how cicadas learned to show their face every 17 years and got wings, longer than some teens live in American cities.

Imagine growing up and walking to school where the school and streets are named for Confederate Generals and slave owners. Imagine if you were Jewish and grew up in a town where there were statues and celebrations for Reverend/Father Coughlin or Henry Ford or worse.

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation–turned–maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.

The Second:
Race and Guns in a
Fatally Unequal America
by Carol Anderson
(Emory)
JUNE 1, 2021
BLOOMSBURY

From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment--and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.

In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.

From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless--revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.

Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life--as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.

The Rational Bible:
Deuteronomy
by Dennis Prager
June 8, 2021
Moved to September 14, 2021
Regnery

From the co author of Questions People Ask About Judaism, author of over a dozen other other books, and syndicated radio talk show host, come his latest volume in a series on bible commentary.

Is the Bible, the most influential book in world history, still relevant? Why do people dismiss it as being irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things?

This explanation of the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, will demonstrate how it remains profoundly relevant—both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life.

Do you doubt the existence of God because you think believing in God is irrational? This book will cause you to reexamine your doubts.

The title of this commentary is The Rational Bible because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Prager’s forty years of teaching to people of every faith and no faith at all. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world in general and to you on a personal level.

His goal: to change your mind, and, as a result, to change your life.

The Hidden Palace:
A Novel of the Golem
and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker
Book 2 of 2: The Golem and the Jinni
June 8, 2021
Harper

In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.

Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

Life on the Line:
Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic
by Emma Goldberg
(NYTIMES, Yale, Cambridge, Heschel)
June 8, 2021
HARPER

The gripping account of six young doctors enlisted to fight COVID-19, an engrossing, eye-opening book in the tradition of both Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial and Scott Turow’s One L.

In March 2020, soon-to-graduate medical students in New York City were nervously awaiting “match day” when they would learn where they would begin their residencies. Only a week later, these young physicians learned that they would be sent to the front lines of the desperate battle to save lives as the coronavirus plunged the city into crisis.

Taking the Hippocratic Oath via Zoom, these new doctors were sent into iconic New York hospitals including Bellevue and Montefiore, the epicenters of the epicenter. In this powerful book, New York Times journalist Emma Goldberg offers an up-close portrait of six bright yet inexperienced health professionals, each of whom defies a stereotype about who gets to don a doctor’s white coat. Goldberg illuminates how the pandemic redefines what it means for them to undergo this trial by fire as caregivers, colleagues, classmates, friends, romantic partners and concerned family members.

Woven together from in-depth interviews with the doctors, their notes, and Goldberg’s own extensive reporting, this page-turning narrative is an unforgettable depiction of a crisis unfolding in real time and a timeless and unique chronicle of the rite of passage of young doctors.

Included in the profiles is “SAM.” Sam entered the medical field due to the fights against HIV/AIDS. A member of CBST – Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan, Sam met his bf at the synagogue's gay activism march. Also profiled is “ELANA.” A graduate of Yeshiva University, she pondered whether to work against COVID over Shabbat.

A LOOK BACK AT SOME SPRING BOOKS (See also our Spring page)

Crying in H Mart:
A Memoir
by Michelle Zauner
April 20, 2021
KNOPF

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American and Jewish, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Two Against Hitler:
The Daring Mission to Save
Europe's Opera Stars from the Nazis
by Isabel Vincent
May 4, 2021
DELAYED TIL SUMMER 2021
Hachette

An extraordinary account of two British sisters whose obsession with opera became a cover for their roles in helping Jewish refugees flee the Nazis during World War II--a true story that is one part Schindler's List, one part The Sound of Music and all but forgotten, until now.

Born in the early 1900s in small-town England, the Cook sisters--Ida, a budding romance novelist, and Louise, a civil service typist-were single, like many in the Great War generation. They devoted their free time to their passion for opera, making frequent pilgrimages in the 1930s to Germany and Austria to see their favorite stars, many of them Jewish.

Along with the charismatic Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss (a favorite of Hitler's), the Cooks helped form a cabal of opera world insiders who worked in secrecy to save Jews from Hitler between 1937 and the outbreak of World War II. With their seemingly oblivious disposition and gaudy attire, the sisters eluded suspicion of Nazi spies, eventually helping over two dozen Jewish members of the opera community find safe passage to London--men and women who otherwise would have likely perished in the Holocaust.

Based on original research and packed with vivid details--many revealed here for the first time--Isabel Vincent's Two Against Hitler will join the ranks of bestselling books like Code Girls and Hidden Figures in shining the spotlight on the extraordinary contributions of women in wartime.

The Woman with the Blue Star:
A Novel Paperback
by Pam Jenoff
May 4, 2021
Park Row

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris comes a riveting tale of unfathomable sacrifice and unlikely friendship during World War II.

1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.

Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Scorned by her friends and longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.

Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by harrowing true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an emotional testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.

Mergers and Acquisitions:
Or, Everything I Know About Love
I Learned on the Wedding Pages
by Cate Doty
former editor,
The New York Times Vows pages
May 4, 2021
Putnam

A compulsively readable behind-the-scenes memoir that takes readers inside the weddings section of The New York Times--the good, bad, and just plain weird--through the eyes of a young reporter just as she's falling in love herself.

Growing up in the south, where tradition reigns supreme, Cate Doty thought about weddings . . . a lot. She catered for them, she attended many, she imagined her own. So, when she moved to New York City in pursuit of love--and to write for The New York Times--she finds her natural home in the wedding section, a first step to her own happily-ever-after, surely. Soon Cate is thrown into the cutthroat world of the metropolitan society pages, experiencing the lengths couples go to have their announcements accepted and the lengths the writers go in fact-checking their stories; the surprising, status-signaling details that matter most to brides and grooms; and the politics of the paper at a time of vast cultural and industry changes.

Reporting weekly on couples whose relationships seem enviable--or eye-roll worthy--and dealing with WASPy grandparents and last-minute snafus, Cate is surrounded by love, or what we're told to believe is love. But when she starts to take the leap herself, she begins to ask her own questions about what it means to truly commit...

Warm, witty, and keenly observed, Mergers and Acquisitions is an enthralling dive into one of society's most esteemed institutions, its creators and subjects, and a young woman's coming-of-age.

<

Love Like Water,
Love Like Fire
by Mikhail Iossel
May 4, 2021
Bellevue Literary Press

“Love Like Water, Love Like Fire is an extraordinary book: funny and profound, moving and provocative. Rarely has life in the former USSR (or anywhere, for that matter) been portrayed with such a rich admixture of soaring observation and finely rendered detail. This is a gorgeously constructed collection by one of our wittiest and most insightful writers.” -Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans

“Mikhail Iossel is a genius, a comic visionary in the tradition of Gogol, Keret, Barthelme, and Saunders. Love Like Water, Love Like Fire is a book of surprises and delights.” -Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening and Florence Gordon

From the moment of its founding, the USSR was reviled and admired, demonized and idealized. Many Jews saw the new society ushered in by the Russian Revolution as their salvation from shtetl life with its deprivations and deadly pogroms. But Soviet Russia was rife with antisemitism, and a Jewish boy growing up in Leningrad learned early, harsh, and enduring lessons.

Unsparing and poignant, Mikhail Iossel’s twenty stories of Soviet childhood and adulthood, dissidence and subsequent immigration, are filled with wit and humor even as they describe the daily absurdities of a fickle and often perilous reality.

Mikhail Iossel immigrated to the United States in 1986 from the former USSR and is an associate professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

A Fortress in Brooklyn:
Race, Real Estate, and the
Making of Hasidic Williamsburg
by Nathaniel Deutsch
Michael Casper
May 11, 2021
Yale University Press

The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn

Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim avoided assimilation, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.

THE LOST NOVEL....

THE PASSENGER
BY ULRICH ALEXANDER BOSCHWITZ
Translated from German by Philip Boehm
April 13, 2021
Metropolitan

Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany

Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.

And then another. And another . . . until his flight becomes a frantic odyssey across Germany, as he searches first for information, then for help, and finally for escape. His travels bring him face-to-face with waiters and conductors, officials and fellow outcasts, seductive women and vicious thieves, a few of whom disapprove of the regime while the rest embrace it wholeheartedly.

Clinging to his existence as it was just days before, Silbermann refuses to believe what is happening even as he is beset by opportunists, betrayed by associates, and bereft of family, friends, and fortune. As his world collapses around him, he is forced to concede that his nightmare is all too real.

Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Taut, immediate, infused with acerbic Kafkaesque humor, The Passenger is an indelible portrait of a man and a society careening out of control.

Sephardi:
Cooking the History.
Recipes of the Jews of Spain
and the Diaspora, from the 13th Century Onwards
by Chef Hélène Jawhara Piñer, Phd
May 11, 2021
Cherry Orchard Books

In this extraordinary cookbook, chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer combines rich culinary history and Jewish heritage to serve up over fifty culturally significant recipes. Steeped in the history of the Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spain) and their diaspora, these recipes are expertly collected from such diverse sources as medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, medical treatises, poems, and literature. Original sources ranging from the thirteenth century onwards and written in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian, and Hebrew, are here presented in English translation, bearing witness to the culinary diversity of the Sephardim, who brought their cuisine with them and kept it alive wherever they went. Jawhara-Piñer provides enlightening commentary for each recipe, revealing underlying societal issues from anti-Semitism to social order. In addition, the author provides several of her own recipes inspired by her research and academic studies.

Each creation and bite of the dishes herein are guaranteed to transport the reader to the most deeply moving and intriguing aspects of Jewish history. Jawhara-Piñer reminds us that eating is a way to commemorate the past.

BAVEL
Modern Recipes Inspired by the Middle East
[A Cookbook]
by Ori Menashe,
Genevieve Gergis, Lesley Suter
May 25, 2021
Ten Speed Press

From the acclaimed chefs behind award-winning Los Angeles restaurant Bavel comes a gorgeous cookbook featuring personal stories and more than eighty recipes that celebrate the diversity of Middle Eastern cuisines.

“Ori and Genevieve manage to pull off a style of cooking that is both familiar (and therefore comforting) but also new (and therefore fresh and exciting). This is the sort of food I could live on.”—Yotam Ottolenghi

When chef Ori Menashe and pastry chef Genevieve Gergis opened their first Los Angeles restaurant, Bestia, the city fell in love. By the time they launched their second restaurant, Bavel, the love affair had expanded to cooks and food lovers nationwide. Bavel, the cookbook, invites home cooks to explore the broad and varied cuisines of the Middle East through fragrant spice blends; sublime zhougs, tahini, labneh, and hummus; rainbows of crisp-pickled vegetables; tender, oven-baked flatbreads; fall-off-the-bone meats and tagines; buttery pastries and tarts; and so much more.

Bavel—pronounced bah-VELLE, the Hebrew name for Babel—is a metaphor for the myriad cultural, spiritual, and political differences that divide us. The food of Bavel tells the many stories of the countries defined as “the Middle East.” These recipes are influenced by the flavors and techniques from all corners of the region, and many, such as Tomato with Smoked Harissa, Turmeric Chicken with Toum, and Date-Walnut Tart, are inspired by Menashe’s Israeli upbringing and Gergis’s Egyptian roots. Bavel celebrates the freedom to cook what we love without loyalty to any specific country, and represents a world before the region was divided into separate nations. This is cooking without borders.

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
by Elyssa Friedland
May 18, 2021
Berkley

A family reunion for the ages when two clans convene for the summer at their beloved getaway in the Catskills—perfect for fans of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—from the acclaimed author of The Floating Feldmans.

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families – best friends and business partners – have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be – and neither is the relationship between the Goldmanqqqqs and the Weingolds. As the facilities and management begin to fall apart, a tempting offer to sell forces the two families together again to make a heart-wrenching decision. Can they save their beloved Golden or is it too late?

Long-buried secrets emerge, new dramas and financial scandal erupt, and everyone from the traditional grandparents to the millennial grandchildren wants a say in the hotel’s future. Business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story, where the hotel owners rediscover the magic of a bygone era of nonstop fun even as they grapple with what may be their last resort.

NOISE
A Flaw in Human Judgment
by Daniel Kahneman,
Olivier Sibony, and
Cass R. Sunstein
May 18, 2021
Little, Brown

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, coauthor of Nudge, and author of You Are About to Make a Terrible Mistake!, Noise is a revolutionary exploration of why people make bad judgments, "full of novel insights, rigorous evidence, engaging writing, and practical applications” (Adam Grant).

Imagine a rabbi gives you advice, but it would be different if given in the afternoon or morning.
Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients — or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. The only difference is the day of the week.

What if when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone.

These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical. In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection. Wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Yet, most of the time, individuals and organizations alike are unaware of it. They neglect noise. With a few simple remedies, people can reduce both noise and bias, and so make far better decisions.

Packed with original ideas, and offering the same kinds of research-based insights that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment—and what we can do about it.

X TROOP
The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II
by Leah Garrett
May 25, 2021
HMH

"Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler."—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and TheLiberator

The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now

June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad.

Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis.

“Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies

LETTERS TO CAMONDO
BY EDMUND De WAAL
May 11, 2021
FS&G

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo

Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art.

The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople, “the Rothschilds of the East,” who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists, art collectors, and fixtures of Belle Époque high society, as well as being targets of antisemitism-much like de Waal's relations, the Ephrussi family, to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son, Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War, the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually, the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis.

After de Waal, one of the world’s greatest ceramic artists, was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house, he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation, melancholy, family, art, the vicissitudes of history, and the value of memory.

JULY 2021 BOOK RELEASES
JULY 2021 BOOK RELEASES
JULY 2021 BOOK RELEASES

The Forest of Vanishing Stars:
A Novel
by Kristin Harmel
JULY 6, 2021
GALLERY BOOKS

The New York Times bestselling author of the “heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism” (People) The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author whose writing has been hailed as “sweeping and magnificent” (Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author), “immersive and evocative” (Publishers Weekly), and “gripping” (Tampa Bay Times).

The Happiest Man on Earth
by Eddie Jaku
JULY 6, 2021
Macmillian Australia

Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you. Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested, and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom, and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the "happiest man on earth." Published as Eddie turns 100, this is a powerful, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.

BEING JEWISH TODAY
CONFRONTING THE REAL ISSUE
Rabbi Tony Bayfield, PhD
JULY 13, 2021
Bloomsbury Continuum

Reissued from 2019

This is a book which understands and faces the impact of modernity on the Jewish community today. Being Jewish Today gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by all faiths and none.

Beginning with an account of the journey of Jewish people and thought from ancient times to the present day, Bayfield goes on to consider Jewish identity, Israel as land and the scourge of anti-Semitism. He then turns to the twin concerns of Torah: Halakhah – practice, and Aggadah – ethics, along with the matter of belief in a world faced with global extinction. Finally, in addressing the manifest injustice of life, Rabbi Bayfield confronts the widely evaded questions of universal suffering and divine inaction.

Drawing on key religious and secular thinkers who contribute to the force of his argument, Bayfield's masterful, challenging and urgent book will appeal to all Jews, whether religious or cultural, and to anyone curious about the nature of Judaism and religion today.

The Cellist:
A Novel
(Gabriel Allon, #21)
by Daniel Silva
JULY 13, 2021
Bloomsbury Continuum

Master of international intrigue Daniel Silva follows up his acclaimed #1 New York Times bestsellers The Order, The New Girl, and The Other Woman with this riveting, action-packed tale of espionage and suspense featuring art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon.

The fatal poisoning of a Russian billionaire sends Gabriel Allon on a dangerous journey across Europe and into the orbit of a musical virtuoso who may hold the key to the truth about his friend’s death. The plot Allon uncovers leads to secret channels of money and influence that go to the very heart of Western democracy and threaten the stability of the global order. The Cellist is a breathtaking entry in Daniel Silva’s “outstanding series” (People magazine) and reveals once more his superb artistry and genius for invention—and demonstrates why he belongs “firmly alongside le Carré and Forsyth as one of the greatest spy novelists of all time” (The Real Book Spy).

Conquering Jerusalem
Paperback
by Stephen Dando-Collins
JULY 13, 2021
Turner

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN STEPHEN DANDO-COLLINS PROVIDES UNPARALLELED NEW INSIGHT INTO THE FIRST JEWISH REVOLT

66 CE. Menahem ben Judah -leader of the Jewish daggerman, the Sicari, attacks the Romans at Masada.

Dando-Collins details the conflict from both sides of the 7-year campaign. His examination of the revolt draws upon numerous archaeological and forensic discoveries made in recent years to illuminate the people and events as never before.

Neither side emerges from the conflict unscathed. Both were at times equally heroic and barbaric.

In the end, the Jewish freedom fighters lost the war and lost Jerusalem, their holy city – the focus of the campaign by both sides. Yet today, Jerusalem is once more the heart of the Jewish faith, while, thanks to Christianity – an offshoot of Judaism – the Roman Empire and its gods are long gone.

Conquering Jerusalem illustrates that faith can have its rewards, and the tables can be turned, if you wait long enough.

I COULDN'T LOVE YOU MORE
A NOVEL
BY ESTHER FREUD
JULY 13, 2021
ecco

A sweeping story of three generations of women, crossing from London to Ireland and back again, and the enduring effort to retrieve the secrets of the past

It’s London, 1960, and Aoife Kelly—once the sparkling object of young men’s affections—runs pubs with her brusque, barking husband, Cash. Their courtship began in wartime London, before they returned to Ireland with their daughters in tow. One of these daughters—fiery, independent-minded Rosaleen—moves back to London, where she meets and begins an affair with the famous sculptor Felix Lehmann, a German-Jewish refugee artist over twice her tender eighteen years. When Rosaleen finds herself pregnant with Felix’s child, she is evicted from her flat, dismissed from her job, and desperate to hide the secret from her family. Where, and to whom, can she turn?

Meanwhile, Kate, another generation down, lives in present-day London with her young daughter and husband, an unsuccessful musician and destructive alcoholic. Adopted and floundering to find a sense of herself in the midst of her unhappy marriage, Kate sets out to track down her birth mother, a search that leads her to a Magdalene Laundry in Ireland and the harrowing history that it holds. Stirring and nostalgic at moments, visceral and propulsive at others, I Couldn’t Love You More is a tender, candid portrait of love, sex, motherhood, and the enduring ties of family. It is impossible not to fall under the spell of this tale of mothers and daughters, wives and muses, secrets and outright lies.

Rachel to the Rescue
A Novel - Paperback
by Elinor Lipman
JULY 13, 2021
Mariner

Rachel Klein is fired from her job at the White House after she sends an email criticizing Donald Trump to a friend, but clicked on REPLY ALL. She had scored a White House job working for the “shredder in chief,” in documents and records management.

As she is escorted off the premises she is hit by a speeding car, driven by what the press will discreetly call "a personal friend of the President." it is the President's optometrist.

Does that explain the flowers, the get-well wishes at a press briefing, the hush money offered by a lawyer at her hospital bedside? Rachel’s recovery is soothed by comically doting parents, matchmaking lesbian roommates, a new job as aide to a journalist whose books aim to defame the President, and unexpected love at the local wine store.

But secrets leak about a throuple or more involving the optometrist, the president, and more; and Rachel’s new-found happiness has to make room for more than a little chaos. Will she bring down the President? Or will he manage to do that all by himself? Rachel to the Rescue is a mischievous political satire, with a delightful cast of characters, from one of America’s funniest novelists.

Mitka’s Secret:
A True Story of Child Slavery
and Surviving the Holocaust
by Steven W. Brallier,
Joel N. Lohr, and Lynn G. Beck (Contributors)
JULY 20, 2021
Eerdman

Mitka Kalinski had never revealed his past to anyone. Not even to his wife or his four children. But in 1981, three decades after it had all ended, Mitka finally broke his silence about the horrors he had endured during the Holocaust and in the years immediately afterward: not only German concentration camps and sadistic medical experiments but also seven years of enslavement in the household of a Nazi officer, “Iron” Gustav Dörr.

Having been orphaned before the war, Mitka did not know his origins or even his name. Torture, slavery, and a false name stripped him of his identity entirely. Thus, when he immigrated to the United States in 1951, Mitka seized the opportunity to bury his past and forge a new life. He lived the American life in all its fullness and moved to Nevada with his beloved wife, Adrienne, and their children. But the secret he carried became an increasingly heavy burden, preventing wholeness and healing.

This is Mitka’s account of facing the past, confronting his captors, connecting with lost relatives, and finding peace in the rediscovery of his origins. For Mitka, this also meant reclaiming his Jewish heritage — a journey that gave him a new sense of purpose and freedom from the lingering effects of trauma that had filled his life to that point. By the end, Mitka’s Secret is less a story of survival and more one of redemption and transformation—from hidden suffering to abundant joy.

AUGUST 2021 BOOK RELEASES
AUGUST 2021 BOOK RELEASES
AUGUST 2021 BOOK RELEASES

The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line:
Untold Stories of the Women
Who Changed the Course of World War II
by Mari Eder
August 3, 2021

For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII-in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

c The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn't expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they've gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen-in and out of uniform.

Liane B. Russell fled Austria with nothing and later became a renowned U.S. scientist whose research on the effects of radiation on embryos made a difference to thousands of lives. Gena Turgel was a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Bergen-Belsen and cared for the young Anne Frank, who was dying of typhus. Gena survived and went on to write a memoir and spent her life educating children about the Holocaust. Ida and Louise Cook were British sisters who repeatedly smuggled out jewelry and furs and served as sponsors for refugees, and they also established temporary housing for immigrant families in London.

Retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder wrote this book because she knew their stories needed to be told-and the sooner the better. For theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

Once We Were Slaves:
The Extraordinary Journey of a
Multi-Racial Jewish Family
by Laura Leibman
August 10, 2021

An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line.

Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and – at times – white.

While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race--as well as on the role of religion in racial shift--in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Samuelson Friedman:
The Battle Over the Free Market
by Nicholas Wapshott
August 3, 2021
NORTON

From the author of Keynes Hayek, the next great duel in the history of economics.

In 1966 two columnists joined Newsweek magazine. Their assignment: debate the world of business and economics. Paul Samuelson was a towering figure in Keynesian economics, which supported the management of the economy along lines prescribed by John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. Milton Friedman, little known at that time outside of conservative academic circles, championed “monetarism” and insisted the Federal Reserve maintain tight control over the amount of money circulating in the economy.

In Samuelson Friedman, author and journalist Nicholas Wapshott brings narrative verve and puckish charm to the story of these two giants of modern economics, their braided lives and colossal intellectual battles.

Samuelson (Summers, Arrow), a forbidding technical genius, grew up a child of relative privilege and went on to revolutionize macroeconomics. He wrote the best-selling economics textbook of all time, famously remarking "I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws-or crafts its advanced treatises-if I can write its economics textbooks." His friend and adversary for decades, Milton Friedman, studied the Great Depression and with Anna Schwartz wrote the seminal books The Great Contraction and A Monetary History of the United States.

Like Friedrich Hayek (not Jewish, although he hung out with Jews in Vienna and was related to the non Jewish side of Wittgenstein) before him, Friedman found fortune writing a treatise, Capitalism and Freedom, that yoked free markets and libertarian politics in a potent argument that remains a lodestar for economic conservatives today.

In Wapshott’s nimble hands, Samuelson and Friedman’s decades-long argument over how-or whether-to manage the economy becomes a window onto one of the longest periods of economic turmoil in the United States. As the soaring economy of the 1950s gave way to decades stalked by declining prosperity and "stagflation," it was a time when the theory and practice of economics became the preoccupation of politicians and the focus of national debate. It is an argument that continues today.

The Ambassador:
Joseph P. Kennedy at
the Court of St. James's 1938-1940
by Susan Ronald
August 3, 2021
St. Martin's Press

People are always so shocked that JFK and RFK were womanizers and narcissists. They are incredulous that RFK Jr pushes anti Vaxx messaging. And then they read about Joseph P. Kennedy and say... a-ha
Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald reveals the truth about Joseph P. Kennedy's deeply controversial tenure as Ambassador to Great Britain on the eve of World War II.

On February 18, 1938, Joseph P. Kennedy was sworn in as US Ambassador to the Court of St. James. To say his appointment to the most prestigious and strategic diplomatic post in the world shocked the Establishment was an understatement: known for his profound Irish roots and staunch Catholicism, not to mention his “plain-spoken” opinions and womanizing, he was a curious choice as Europe hurtled toward war.

Initially welcomed by the British, in less than two short years Kennedy was loathed by the White House, the State Department and the British Government.

Believing firmly that Fascism was the inevitable wave of the future, he consistently misrepresented official US foreign policy internationally as well as direct instructions from FDR himself. The Americans were the first to disown him and the British and the Nazis used Kennedy to their own ends.

Through meticulous research and many newly available sources, Ronald confirms in impressive detail what has long been believed by many:
that Kennedy was a Fascist sympathizer
that Kennedy was an anti-Semite whose only loyalty was to his family's advancement.

She also reveals the ambitions of the Kennedy dynasty during this period abroad, as they sought to enter the world of high society London and establish themselves as America’s first family. Thorough and utterly readable, The Ambassador explores a darker side of the Kennedy patriarch in an account sure to generate attention and controversy.

CHASING HiSTORY
A KID IN THE NEWSROOM
BY CARL BERNSTEIN
August 10, 2021
HOLT

The Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of All the President’s Men-the chronicle of the investigative report about the Watergate break-in and resultant political scandal which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation-recalls his formative years as a teenage newspaper reporter in JFK’s Washington-a tale of adventures, scrapes, clever escapes, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

With these words, the sixteen-year-old senior at Montgomery Blair High School set himself apart from the high school crowd and set himself on a track that would define his life. Carl Bernstein was far from the best student in his class-in fact, he was in danger of not graduating at all-but he had a talent for writing, a burning desire to know things that other people didn’t, and a flair for being in the right place at the right time. Those qualities got him inside the newsroom at the Washington Star, the afternoon paper in the nation’s capital, in the summer of 1960, a pivotal time for America, for Washington, D.C., and for a young man in a hurry on the cusp of adulthood.

Chasing History opens up the world of the early 1960s as Bernstein experienced it, chasing after grisly crimes with the paper’s police reporter, gathering colorful details at a John F. Kennedy campaign rally, running afoul of union rules, and confronting racial tensions as the civil rights movement gained strength. We learn alongside him as he comes to understand the life of a newspaperman, and we share his pride as he hunts down information, gets his first byline, and discovers that he has a talent for the job after all.

By turns exhilarating, funny, tense, and poignant, Chasing History shows us a country coming into its own maturity along with young Carl Bernstein, and when he strikes out on his own after five years at the Star, his hard-won knowledge and experience feels like ours as well.

I Left My Homework in the Hamptons:
What I Learned Teaching
the Children of the One Percent
by Blythe Grossberg, Psy.D.
August 17, 2021
Hanover Square Press

A captivating memoir about tutoring for Manhattan’s elite, revealing how a life of extreme wealth both helps and harms the children of the one percent.
Ben orders daily room service while living in a five-star hotel.
Olivia collects luxury brand sneakers worn by celebrities.
Dakota jets off to Rome when she needs to avoid drama at school.
Welcome to the inner circle of New York’s richest families, where academia is an obsession, wealth does nothing to soothe status anxiety and parents will try just about anything to gain a competitive edge in the college admissions rat race.

When Blythe Grossberg first started as a tutor and learning specialist, she had no idea what awaited her inside the high-end apartments of Fifth Avenue. Children are expected to be as efficient and driven as CEOs, starting their days with 5:00 a.m. squash practice and ending them with late-night tutoring sessions. Meanwhile, their powerful parents will do anything to secure one of the precious few spots at the Ivy Leagues, whatever the cost to them or their kids.

Through stories of the children she tutors that are both funny and shocking, Grossberg shows us the privileged world of America’s wealthiest families and the systems in place that help them stay on top.

Dr. Grossberg is the author of several books about learning differences, including “Making ADD Work” and “Asperger’s Rules.” A graduate of Harvard College, she received a doctoral degree in psychology from Rutgers University. Formerly the Upper School learning specialist at the Collegiate School and at Packer Collegiate in New York City, she has worked with students with learning differences, autism, ADHD, and executive function issues for 20 years. Dr. Grossberg believes that the match between the student and tutor can help the student grow. She also believes she has learned more from her students than they’ve learned from her.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(Little People, BIG DREAMS)
by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara
Judit Orosz (Illustrator)
August 24, 2021
Frances Lincoln Books
Preschool - 5

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the incredible life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the beloved supreme court justice.

Little Ruth’s mom taught her to be a lady—which meant to be her own independent self. Ruth promised herself she would do everything her mother didn’t get the chance to do. And she excelled: at school, as a law professor, and later on the supreme court fighting gender discrimination. This inspiring book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the justice’s life.

Little People, BIG DREAMS is a best-selling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardcover versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games, and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.

Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

REAL ESTATE
A LIVING AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY DEBORAH LEVY
Part 3 in a trilogy
August 24, 2021
BLOOMSBURY

Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer, a woman needs a room of one's own. Now, in Real Estate, acclaimed author Deborah Levy concludes her ground-breaking trilogy of living autobiographies with an exhilarating, boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it.

In this vibrant memoir, Levy employs her characteristic indelible writing, sharp wit, and acute insights to craft a searing examination of womanhood and ownership. Her inventory of possessions, real and imagined, pushes readers to question our cultural understanding of belonging and belongings and to consider the value of a woman's intellectual and personal life.

Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory, Real Estate is a brilliant, compulsively readable narrative.

More Than I Love My Life:
A novel
by David Grossman
Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
August 24, 2021
KNOPF

From the internationally best-selling author, a remarkable novel of suffering, love, and healing: the story of three generations of women and a secret that needs to be told

More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili—abandoned by Nina when she was just three—has always been close to her grandmother. With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera was imprisoned and tortured for three years as a young wife after she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey—filtered through the lens of Gili’s camera, as she seeks to make a film that might help explain her life—lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion.

More Than I Love My Life was inspired by the true story of one of David Grossman’s longtime confidantes, a woman who, in the early 1950s, was held on the notorious Goli Otok (“the Adriatic Alcatraz”). With flashbacks to the stalwart Vera protecting what was most precious on the wretched rock where she was held, and Grossman’s fearless examination of the human heart, this swift novel is a thrilling addition to the oeuvre of one of our greatest living novelists, whose revered moral voice continues to resonate around the world.

The Secret History of Food:
Strange but True Stories
About the Origins of Everything We Eat
by Matt Siegel
August 31, 2021
ECCO

An irreverent, surprising, and entirely entertaining look at the little-known history surrounding the foods we know and love

Is Italian olive oil really Italian, or are we dipping our bread in lamp oil? Why are we masochistically drawn to foods that can hurt us, like hot peppers? Far from being a classic American dish, is apple pie actually . . . English?

“As a species, we’re hardwired to obsess over food,” Matt Siegel explains as he sets out “to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths.” Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths—and realities—of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis.

The Secret History of Food is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual, and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef’s knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, The Secret History of Food is essential reading for all foodies.

The MAGICIAN
A NOVEL
BY COLM TOIBIN
September 7, 2021
SCRIBNER

From one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War.

Colm Tóibín’s magnificent new novel opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles.

In a stunning marriage of research and imagination, Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is unparalleled and whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of illicit desire. The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived—the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile. This is a man and a family fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed, and unforgettable. As People magazine said about The Master, “It’s a delicate, mysterious process, this act of creation, fraught with psychological tension, and Tóibín captures it beautifully.”

System Error:
Where Big Tech Went Wrong
and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich,
Mehran Sahami, Jeremy M. Weinstein
September 21, 2021
HARPER

A forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professors—experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades—which reveals how big tech’s obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.

In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. Yet too few of us see any alternative to accepting the onward march of technology. We have simply accepted a technological future designed for us by technologists, the venture capitalists who fund them, and the politicians who give them free rein.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. This optimization mindset substitutes what companies care about for the values that we as a democratic society might choose to prioritize. Well-intentioned optimizers fail to measure all that is meaningful and, when their creative disruptions achieve great scale, they impose their values upon the rest of us.

Armed with an understanding of how technologists think and exercise their power, three Stanford professors—a philosopher working at the intersection of tech and ethics, a political scientist who served under Obama, and the director of the undergraduate Computer Science program at Stanford (also an early Google engineer)—reveal how we can hold that power to account.

Troubled by the values that permeate the university’s student body and its culture, they worked together to chart a new path forward, creating a popular course to transform how tomorrow’s technologists approach their profession. Now, as the dominance of big tech becomes an explosive societal conundrum, they share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at stake, and what we can do to control technology instead of letting it control us.

Uncontrolled Spread:
Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and
How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic
by Scott Gottlieb
September 21, 2021
HARPER

Has America’s COVID-19 catastrophe taught us anything?

In Uncontrolled Spread, physician and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb shows how COVID-19 was able to trounce America’s pandemic preparations and outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced.

A system-wide failure across government institutions left the nation blind to the threat, and unable to mount an effective response. We’d prepared for the wrong virus. We failed to identify the contagion early enough and became overly reliant on costly and sometimes divisive tactics that couldn’t fully slow the spread. We never considered asymptomatic transmission and we assumed people would follow public health guidance. Key bureaucracies like the CDC were hidebound and outmatched. Weak leadership aggravated these woes. We didn’t view a public health disaster as a threat to our national security.

Uncontrolled Spread argues we must fix our systems and prepare for a deadlier coronavirus variant, a flu pandemic, or whatever else nature may threaten us with. Gottlieb outlines policies and investments that are essential to prepare the United States and the world for future threats.

Unrequited Infatuations:
A Memoir
by Stevie Van Zandt
September 28, 2021
HACHETTE

Jews are an essential part of Springsteen’s entourage. Stevie is not one of them, but drummer, “Mighty” Max Weinberg, is Jewish and his parents ran a Jewish summer camp. Louis Lahav, a sound engineer for Springsteen is Jewish. Mike Appel and Jon Landau, Bruce's past managers, were MOT. Clive Davis, who signed Springsteen... Jewish. Marc Brickman, sound, also. Rabbi Harold Schulweis influenced songs on The River. Okay.. but back to Van Zandt the E STREET BAND member known for leaving the band at the wrong imes, but pursuing a great career in music, acting, activism and philanthropy

An epic tale of self-discovery by a self-confessed Rock n Roll disciple. The odyssey of the guy in the second seat. A story of the triumph of art over commerce. Van Zandt thought of a memoir a decade ago, but needed to wait for a significant ending, and his output over the past three years in a triumph.

What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early '60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story.

The first true heartbeat of UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with Rock and Roll. Groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones created new ideas of community, creative risk, and principled rebellion. They changed him forever. While still a teenager, he met Bruce Springsteen, a like-minded outcast/true believer who became one of his most important friends and bandmates. Van Zandt was a co founder of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. As Miami Steve, Van Zandt anchored the E Street Band as they conquered the Rock and Roll world.

And then, in the early '80s, Van Zandt stepped away from E Street to embark on his own odyssey. He refashioned himself as Little Steven, a political songwriter and performer, fell in love with Maureen Santoro who greatly expanded his artistic palette, and visited the world’s hot spots as an artist/journalist to not just better understand them, but to help change them. Most famously, he masterminded the recording of “Sun City,” an anti-apartheid anthem that sped the demise of South Africa’s institutionalized racism and helped get Nelson Mandela out of prison.

By the '90s, Van Zandt had lived at least two lives—one as a mainstream rocker, one as a hardcore activist. It was time for a third. David Chase invited Van Zandt to be a part of his new television show, the Sopranos—as Silvio Dante, he was the unconditionally loyal consiglieri who sat at the right hand of Tony Soprano (a relationship that oddly mirrored his real-life relationship with Bruce Springsteen... plus with his Naples/Calabria heritage...).

Underlying all of Van Zandt's various incarnations was a devotion to preserving the centrality of the arts, especially the endangered species of Rock. In the twenty-first century, Van Zandt founded a groundbreaking radio show (Underground Garage), a fiercely independent record label (Wicked Cool), and developed a curriculum to teach students of all ages through the medium of music history. He also rejoined the E Street Band for what has now been a twenty-year victory lap.

UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS chronicles the twists and turns of Stevie Van Zandt’s always surprising life. It is more than just the testimony of a globe-trotting nomad, more than the story of a groundbreaking activist, more than the odyssey of a spiritual seeker, and more than a master class in rock and roll (not to mention a dozen other crafts). It's the best book of its kind because it's the only book of its kind.

Power Born of Dreams:
My Story is Palestine
by Mohammad Sabaaneh
(Cartoonist, Al Hayat al Jdida)
September 21, 2021
Street Noise Books

What does freedom look like from inside an Israeli prison?

The walls of the cell are etched with the names of the prisoners who came before. A bird perches on the cell window and offers a deal: “You bring the pencil, and I will bring the stories,” stories of family, of community, of Gaza, of Palestine.

Mohammad Sabaaneh brings uses his striking linocut artwork to help the world see Palestinian people as human, not as superheroes or political symbols.

Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero
by Saadia Faruqi
September 7, 2021
Quill Tree Books

At a time when we are all asking questions about identity, grief, and how to stand up for what is right, this book by the author of A Thousand Questions will hit home with young readers who love Hena Khan and Varian Johnson—or anyone struggling to understand recent U.S. history and how it still affects us today.

Yusuf Azeem has spent all his life in the small town of Frey, Texas—and nearly that long waiting for the chance to participate in the regional robotics competition, which he just knows he can win.

Only, this year is going to be more difficult than he thought. Because this year is the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, an anniversary that has everyone in his Muslim community on edge.

With “Never Forget” banners everywhere and a hostile group of townspeople protesting the new mosque, Yusuf realizes that the country’s anger from two decades ago hasn’t gone away. Can he hold onto his joy—and his friendships—in the face of heartache and prejudice?

The Lost Café Schindler:
The Lost Cafe Schindler:
One Family, Two Wars,
and the Search for Truth
by Meriel Schindler
October 12, 2021
W.W. NORTON

An extraordinary memoir of a Jewish family spanning two world wars and its flight from Nazi-occupied Austria.

Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship, but also the truth behind their family history.

The Lost Café Schindler re-creates the journey of an extraordinary family, whose relatives included the Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s mother when she was dying of breast cancer; the Kafka family; and Alma Schindler, the wife of Gustav Mahler. But the narrative centers around the Café Schindler, famous for its pastries, home-distilled liquors, live entertainment, and hospitality-which was expropriated during the Nazi era. This is a story of tragic loss-several relatives disappeared in Terezín and Auschwitz-but ultimately of reclamation and reconciliation.

The Book of Mac:
Remembering Mac Miller
by Donna-Claire Chesman
October 26, 2021
Permuted Press

An album-by-album celebration of the life and music of Mac Miller through oral histories, intimate reflections, and critical examinations of his enduring work.

Following Mac Miller’s tragic passing in 2018, Donna-Claire Chesman dedicated a year to chronicling his work through the unique lens of her relationship to the music and Mac’s singular relationship to his fans. Like many who’d been following him since he’d started releasing mixtapes at eighteen years old, she felt as if she’d come of age alongside the rapidly evolving artist, with his music being crucial to her personal development.

“I want people to remember his humanity as they’re listening to the music, to realize how much bravery and courage it takes to be that honest, be that self-aware, and be that real about things going on internally. He let us witness that entire journey. He never hid that.” —Kehlani, friend and musician.

The project evolved to include intimate interviews with many of Mac’s closest friends and collaborators, from his Most Dope Family in Pittsburgh to the producers and musicians who assisted him in making his everlasting music, including Big Jerm, Rex Arrow, Wiz Khalifa, Benjy Grinberg, Just Blaze, Josh Berg, Syd, Thundercat, and more. These voices, along with the author’s commentary, provide a vivid and poignant portrait of this astonishing artist—one who had just released a series of increasingly complex albums, demonstrating what a musical force he was and how heartbreaking it was to lose him.

“As I’m reading the lyrics, it’s crazy. It’s him telling us that he hopes we can always respect him. I feel like this is a message from him, spiritually. A lot of the time, his music was like little letters and messages to his friends, family, and people he loved, to remind them of who he really was.” —Quentin Cuff, best friend and tour manager.

MODERNIST PIZZA
by
Nathan Myhrvold
Francisco Migoya
October 5, 2021
About $400 for the set

Modernist Pizza is the definitive guide to the world’s most popular food. Created by the team that published the critically acclaimed Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking and Modernist Bread, this groundbreaking set is the culmination of exhaustive research, travel, and experiments to collect and advance the world’s knowledge of pizza. Authors Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya share practical tips and innovative techniques, which are the outcome of hundreds of tests and experiments.

Spanning 1,708 pages, including three volumes plus a recipe manual, Modernist Pizza is much more than a cookbook: it’s an indispensable resource for anyone who not only loves to eat pizza but is also interested in the science, stories, cultures, and history behind it.

Each gorgeously illustrated chapter examines a different aspect of pizza, from its history and top travel destinations to dough, sauce, cheese, toppings, equipment, and more. Housed in a red stainless-steel case, Modernist Pizza contains over 1,000 traditional and avant-garde recipes to make pizza from around the globe, each carefully developed with both professional and home pizzaioli in mind. Modernist Pizza will provide you with the tools to evolve your craft, invent, and make sublime creations. There’s never been a better time to make pizza.

Operation Joktan
(A Nir Tavor Mossad Thriller)
Amir Tsarfati, Steve Yohn
November 16, 2021

The thrilling first installment in a new series from bestselling prophecy author Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn

In present-day Israel, Mossad intelligence catches word that a foreign militia is planning a drone strike on Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Nir Tavor, an Israeli secret service member turned Mossad agent, has noticed an increasing number of Arab nations being targeted by radicals in the lead-up to the Abraham Accords.

Reteaming with Nicole le Roux, a fellow agent and former flame, Nir is prepared to do everything he can to stop this attack. Yet Nicole has reentered his life as a changed woman with a newfound peace. As they work together to stop the radicals using a combination of cutting-edge technology and on-the-ground manpower, Nir grows increasingly captivated by the hope that has transformed Nicole since they were last together.

Authors Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn draw on true events as well as political and tactical insights Amir learned from his time in the Israeli Defense Forces. For believers in God’s life-changing promises, Operation Joktan is a suspense-filled page-turner that illuminates the blessing Israel can be to the world.

Both/And:
A Life in Many Worlds
by Huma Abedin
November 2, 2021
Scribner

So many people have an opinion on Huma Abedin (and Hillary Clinton) without knowing the facts. They think of her as a driven focused power hungry political player who attached herself to the Clinton's, married a political striver (Anthony Weiner) to form a power couple of a new generation, and had it all fall apart as Clinton lost and Anthony Weiner was jailed. BUT this memoir sets the record straight. In her book, Huma Abedin — Hillary Clinton’s famously private top aide and longtime adviser — takes command and defines her own story.

In her memoir, she writes that she is the daughter of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals and advocates who split their time between Saudi Arabia, the UK, and the United States. She grapples with family, legacy, identity, faith, marriage, and motherhood.

Abedin scored a college internship in the office of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1996. She found that thrived in rooms with diplomats and sovereigns, entrepreneurs and artists, philanthropists and activists (I mean, who wouldn't? It is much easier to thrive among celebrities than with regular people...), and Huma witnessed many crucial moments including Camp David's attempts at Mideast peace, Ground Zero in the days after the 9/11 attacks, the inauguration of Barack Obama, the the time Hillary was nominated at the DNC as the party's first female presidential candidate.

Abedin’s relationship with Clinton has seen both women through extraordinary personal and professional highs, as well as the lows that were played out in public. Both women had to deal with spouses who were sex addicts or used sex for power. Both women had to deal with whisper campaigns about infidelity and being LGBT. But in her memoir, she writes of Clinton as mentor, confidante, and role model. Abedin cuts through caricature, rumor, and misinformation to reveal a crystal-clear portrait of Clinton as a brilliant and caring leader a steadfast friend, generous, funny, hardworking, and dedicated. Both/And is a candid and heartbreaking chronicle of Abedin’s marriage to Anthony Weiner, what drew her to him, how much she wanted to believe in him, the devastation wrought by his betrayals—and their shared love for their son.

It is also a timeless story of a young woman with aspirations and ideals coming into her own in high-pressure jobs, and a testament to the potential for women in leadership to blaze a path forward while supporting those who follow in their footsteps. Both/And describes Abedin’s journey through the opportunities and obstacles, the trials and triumphs, of a full and complex life. Abedin’s compassion and courage, her resilience and grace, her work ethic and mission are an inspiration to people of all ages.

“This journey has led me through exhilarating milestones and devastating setbacks,” said Abedin. “I have walked both with great pride and in overwhelming shame. It is a life I am—more than anything—enormously grateful for and a story I look forward to sharing.”

0

Huda F Are You?
by Huda Fahmy
November 2, 2021
Dial Books

From the creator of Yes, I'm Hot In This, this cheeky, hilarious, and honest graphic novel asks the question everyone has to figure out for themselves: Who are you?

Huda and her family just moved to Dearborn, Michigan, a small town with a big Muslim population. In her old town, Huda knew exactly who she was: She was the hijabi girl. But in Dearborn, everyone is the hijabi girl.

Huda is lost in a sea of hijabis, and she can't rely on her hijab to define her anymore. She has to define herself. So she tries on a bunch of cliques, but she isn't a hijabi fashionista or a hijabi athlete or a hijabi gamer. She's not the one who knows everything about her religion or the one all the guys like. She's miscellaneous, which makes her feel like no one at all. Until she realizes that it'll take finding out who she isn't to figure out who she is.

Expect the Unexpected:
Ten Lessons on Truth,
Service, and the Way Forward
by Anthony Fauci, MD
November 2, 2021
Hachette

In his own words, world-renowned infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci shares the lessons that have shaped his life philosophy, offering an intimate view of one of the world's greatest medical minds as well as universal advice to live by.

Before becoming the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and America’s most trusted doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci had already devoted three decades to public service. Those looking to live a more compassionate and purposeful life will find inspiration in his unique perspective on leadership, expecting the unexpected, and finding joy in difficult times.

With more than three decades spent combating some of the most dangerous diseases to strike humankind-- AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19--Dr. Fauci has worked in daunting professional conditions and shouldered great responsibility. The earnest reflections in these pages offer a universal message on how to lead in times of crisis and find resilience in the face of disappointments and obstacles.

Sure to strike a chord with readers, the inspiring words of wisdom in this book are centered around life lessons compiled from hours of interviews, offering a concrete path to a bright and hopeful future.

By the Grace of the Game:
The Holocaust, A Basketball Legacy,
and an Unprecedented American Dream
by Dan Grunfeld
November 16, 2021
Trumph

When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.

In By the Grace of the Game, Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn't lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother's Hungarian cooking, so lovingly described. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family. If the magnitude of an American dream is measured by the intensity of the nightmare that came before and the heights of the triumph achieved after, then By the Grace of the Game recounts an American dream story of unprecedented scale.

From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this complex tale traverses the spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations, carried on the shoulders of a simple and beautiful game.

Forthcoming Title
By Jared Kushner
Forthcoming
Kushner, a former senior advisor in the Trump White House will write about his White House experiences, including his role in negotiating normalization deals between Israel and selected Arab nations, including United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco (Abraham Accords); criticisms over his family's 666 Fifth Avenue bailout by an Arab country investment; U.S. prison reform; bilateral trade deals; U.S-China policies; the White House response to the coronavirus pandemic; Russia’s interference in the 2016 election; the two times that President Trump, his father-in-law, was impeached; the issues related to immigration and the Mexican border and the caging and separation of children; his views on the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis; the 2020 election results; the Trump-related siege on January 6, 2021 on the Congress; and his family's move from Washington DC to Miami in 2021.

[book]

PLEASE CLICK HERE
TO TRANSFER TO OUR HOME PAGE:

USE THE "SEARCH" FUNCTION BELOW to find any other books that interest you, or click the top frame to see the other books that Sefer Safari can offer.

Disclaimer: We provide this data as a service to readers. We are not responsible for the results of the use or misuse of the data and/or the review of the works above. Amazon.com fulfills book orders

Email Admin@MyJewishBooks.com

Welcome to MyJewishBooks.com Summer 2021 Suggestions

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO TRANSFER TO OUR HOME PAGE:

PLEASE CLICK HERE
TO TRANSFER TO OUR HOME PAGE: