A worthwhile collection for scholars and readers interested in Jewish affairs.
An intellectual history of 20th-century Judaism.
An adept crew of editors and writers takes on the arduous task of documenting two difficult-to-define concepts: modernity and Judaism. The result is a hefty collection of 44 biographical essays of Jews born as early as the 1850s and as late as the 1950s. The editors identify a full range of individuals to profile, from poets to artists to scientists to politicians. The work begins with a somewhat cumbersome introduction authored by the four editors. “Modernity…can be understood, as we have seen, as a border- and contact-zone: as liminal spaces and liminal times, in which rituals of transformation and of renewal and conversion are believed and staged—and this is expressed in a great deal of critique.” Indeed, each contributor puts forth his or her own expression of what “modernity” is—at least in regards to their own particular subject matter. Various themes run throughout the book, perhaps chief among these being assimilation. Virtually every person profiled is or was, in one way or another, “assimilated” into another, non-Jewish culture. In some cases, that assimilation was muted, though quite real (Abraham Isaac Kook); in other cases, it was quite complete (Simone Weil). Socialism is another recurring theme, as various individuals promoted or at least confronted the new realities of socialist theory and practice in 20th-century Europe. Of course, also playing significant roles are such motifs as anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the inescapable reality of Hitler’s reign. Readers will find an impressive range of personalities from a wide variety of disciplines, including the arts (Mark Rothko), the sciences (Freud, Einstein), literature (Elsa Lasker-Schüler, Kafka, Bellow, Levi, Lispector), statecraft (David Ben-Gurion), philosophy (Buber, Derrida), and a host of others.
A worthwhile collection for scholars and readers interested in Jewish affairs.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-691-16423-6
Page Count: 680
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
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