Impassioned, important reading.
New ideas for fighting age-old hate.
In the “torrent” of correspondence Horn received after her 2021 book, People Love Dead Jews, she detected “a disconnect between my Jewish readers who were asking for support and my non-Jewish readers who were offering it.” Her response? This self-assured effort to identify, and try to counteract, antisemitism. Horn shadows educators teaching non-Jews about Jewish life, attends presentations featuring holograms of Holocaust survivors, and interviews students, academics, and writers. She finds “much more ignorance than malice.” Often, Horn encounters the well-intentioned idea that Jews “are just like everyone else.” To her, this “erasure” puts an added burden on Jews: “If someone doesn’t meet your version of ‘normal,’ then it’s fine to hate them.” In contrast to antisemitism programs that foreground “victimhood,” she started a nonprofit devoted to educating people about Jewish civilization’s rich history of resisting tyranny, “a story about choices and agency” that stands in opposition to the Big Lie of antisemitism. Her mission is urgent, she writes, because as artificial intelligence sucks up data from various suppliers to fuel its answers to users, there is a “vast network…of people engaged in a plot to poison future artificial intelligence sources with antisemitic lies.” Horn’s interviews with Jewish students at Harvard University, where she sat on a committee focused on antisemitism, inform a stinging rebuke of an institution she sees as “platforming” people engaged not in “ideas worthy of intellectual study and engagement” but rather “a full-blown and unchallenged demonization of Israel’s and the Jewish people’s existence.” Horn’s versions of recent events sometimes lack nuance. She gives no quarter when describing protests during the Gaza war as attempts “to establish a new standard of righteousness that aligned with Hamas’s messaging, and to demonize Jews who failed to conform.” That said, she has done valuable work in dissecting antisemitic hate and developing constructive methods to counter it.
Impassioned, important reading.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781668090169
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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