Jewish Exponent Books & Writers Feed http://www.jewishexponent.com In addition to once being the New York Times restaurant reviewer and then the editor of the fabled -- but recently dismantled -- Gourmet magazine, Ruth Reichl is best known for her memoirs Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/20066/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/20066/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT Whenever the topic of torture and the mistreatment of prisoners is revisited in the media, as it has recently been with President Obama's hesitance over closing Guantanamo Bay, my mind returns to the most powerful piece of writing on the su... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/20004/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/20004/ Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES When I was a child, there was no locale in this city that represented White Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege more than Rittenhouse Square. The staid-looking buildings that surrounded the park back then, along with the... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19961/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19961/ Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson. Its sounds like the title of one of those wistful, purposely sentimental novels that seem to be pouring out of publishing houses by the barrel-full these days. But, in reality, the work,... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19916/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19916/ Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES The deep divide between the East and West Coast artistic communities was an undeniable fact of 20th-century creative life in America and was apparent in the realm of literature -- poetry, especially -- and was also at pl... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19869/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19869/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES Of Israeli novelist Yoel Hoffmann's delicate, unorthodox writing, several things can definitively be said. He is directly in the modernist tradition, if by a modernist we mean someone who resists following traditional id... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19818/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19818/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES Reinventing Ritual is another one of those colorful, compact, exquisitely produced catalogues raisonné that Yale University Press produces every year. This particular volume, like several of the previous and more notable o... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19765/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19765/ Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES As the High Holidays approach, publishers begin rolling out their appropriate "seasonal" titles; and among them each year will always be the one book that looks at modern life from a theistic point of view, providing a d... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19734/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19734/ Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES Last year, the Jewish Publication Society began issuing a series of brief books (on average, 125 pages), all in paperback editions with colorful, attractively designed covers bearing the overall title "Jewish Choices... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19676/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19676/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES "Can Israel survive? Does it deserve to?" Could any two questions be more important today to the Jewish community or more pertinent to the lives of committed Jews especially during this period of spiritual introspection?... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19621/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19621/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES There's perhaps no way that any reviewer, in such a relatively small space, could possibly convey the riches that have been amassed -- or more accurately, that were amassed more than 20 years ago -- between the covers of... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19567/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19567/ Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES I approached Dan Gordon's slim little book, Postcards From Heaven, recently published by the Free Press, with a certain amount of trepidation. First, there was the subtitle: Messages of Love From the Other Side, and t... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19520/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19520/ Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES I didn't know what to think when An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb (1876-1953) and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors showed up on my desk. The book is without question a beautiful object in itself, bearing the... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19470/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19470/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMESWhoever came up with the idea for And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl should win some sort of award for hitting upon one of the most inspired and entertaining notions for a book project to appear in recent season... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19437/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19437/ Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES I'm Dying Up Here is about what it's subtitle suggests: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy's Golden Era. The people pictured on the cover -- David Letterman, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis and Andy Kaufman -- are some of... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19389/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19389/ Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT Composer John Kander (left) and lyricist Fred Ebb SPEAKING VOLUMES Lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander were not only collaborators for more than 40 years -- longer than any songwriting partnership in Broadway history, notes their... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19356/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19356/ Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES Phil Camp, the central character of Bill Scheft's third novel, Everything Hurts, published by Simon & Schuster, is grappling with a number of significant dilemmas as the narrative opens. For one thing, everything d... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19313/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19313/ Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT Grigoris BalakianPeter Balakian is primarily a poet, with several acclaimed volumes to his credit. But beginning in the late 1990s, with the appearance of his prize-winning memoir, Black Dog of Fate, recently reissued by Basic Books in a up... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19277/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19277/ Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES It wasn't surprising to discover that Sheryl Kane, author of Volunteer Vacations Across America, has daughters named Aviva and Elanit, and that her mother Ruth Wolfe, who's 86, recently received a lifetime achievement... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19237/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19237/ Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT SPEAKING VOLUMES I don't know how some writers pull it off. When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win by longtime comedy writer Carol Leifer, which was published by Villard, seems to me in form and even sometimes in subject matte... http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19198/ http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19198/ Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT