A well-designed, poignant story of the Holocaust told by two survivors.
Lowy recounts the unlikely reunion of two childhood survivors of the Holocaust in this nonfiction book.
After a long career as a producer and creative director working closely with Van Morrison, Harry Connick, Jr., and Malcolm Gladwell, among others, the author turned to a more personal project in 2001 when he made the documentary Leo’s Journey: The Story of the Mengele Twins. Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the documentary was aired worldwide and featured the story of Lowy’s father Leopold and aunt Miriam, who survived horrific experiments at the hands of Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp during World War II. While the story of Leopold and the making of Leo’s Journeycertainly receive ample coverage in the work (“Imagine growing up and not realizing over fifty members of your family were murdered,” the author reflects), the heart of this book’s narrative is the chance reunion between Leopold and another childhood victim of Mengele. Watching Leo’s Journey from his home in Tel Aviv, Kalman Bar-On instantly recognized the face of Leopold, who had “saved [him] from beatings and looked out for [him]” during a six-month period in 1944 before the liberation of Birkenau. Only knowing Leopold by his nickname “Lipa,” Kalman had faced a series of dead ends throughout his 56-year search for the fellow “Mengele Twin” with whom he had bonded as a child.
Detailing the reunion between Leopold and Kalman, this book also serves as a unique oral history as both men recount their childhoods, experiences in Birkenau, and their subsequent lives after the war. (The text also contains primary sources including reproductions of personal correspondence.) These reminiscences provide a harrowing first-hand account of the grotesque nature of Mengele’s brutality and the callous inhumanity of the Holocaust broadly. As the author quickly discovered following his first meeting with Kalman in Israel, conversing with his father’s childhood ally was “like stepping into history itself.” The recollections of Leopold and Kalman are richly annotated by Lowy with footnotes that provide historical context, descriptions of Yiddish terminology, and commentary on Jewish traditions and culture. A foreword by Michael Berenbaum, Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, adds to the book’s scholarly panache. As impressive as Lowy’s research is, this is ultimately a deeply personal family history crafted by a son seeking to preserve his father’s legacy. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s extensive experience in the entertainment industry, the book’s engaging story is presented in a visually impressive layout featuring a wealth of maps, charts, photographs, and other visual elements. Family trees and a detailed glossary are characteristic of Lowy’s accessible approach as he explores broad questions and themes related to the Holocaust through the lenses of two individuals who both died prior to the book’s publication. While the story is ultimately uplifting (“He is my hero,” Kalman says of Leopold; “I’ve been looking for Leo all my life”), Lowy does not shy away from the brutal history of the Holocaust, including the ways in which Mengele’s psychological torture impacted survivors for more than a half-century after the war’s end.
A well-designed, poignant story of the Holocaust told by two survivors.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781779410092
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tellwell Talent
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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