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OP-ED: CONVICT. DISQUALIFY.
The Urgent Necessity of Limiting Trump’s Violent Bullying As a daughter of refugees from Hitler’s Germany, I developed an interest in how malevolent public figures in history and the present pervert and manipulate language to destructive ends. My interest evolved to where, in the early 1990s, I led a team conducting the first-ever brain…
Read MoreA Tribute at 16 Wallstrasse
Recently, I had the delightful surprise of receiving an email from Günter Voss, Director of the Senioren Computer Club in Berlin-Mitte. Mr. Voss has won recognition for his work in bringing older Berliners up-to-speed with digital literacy. His club meets on Berlin’s Fischerinsel (Fisher Island) in view of 16 Wallstrasse, the building Nazis stole from…
Read MoreAN UPLIFTING BOOK
I deeply cherish Glenn Kurtz’s THREE MINUTES IN POLAND. Praising this important book, Noble laureate Elie Wiesel said: “It is intensely moving and brilliantly researched, and it reads like a thriller.” In 2009, Glenn found a film his paternal grandparents made of their 1938 trip through Europe. One three-minute section especially arrested his attention, as…
Read MoreA JUDITH LEIBER HANUKKAH BOOK
I’m delighted to present this interview with writer Deborah Blumenthal, who together with artist Masha D’Yans created PARROTS, PUGS, AND PIXIE DUST: A Book About Fashion Designer Judith Leiber. While this book would be splendid for the young (and the young at heart) all year long, it’s especially appropriate as a Hanukkah gift, as Judith…
Read MoreDAVID MARWELL’S OUTSTANDING BOOK ON MENGELE
This post is about David G. Marwell’s brilliant book MENGELE: UNMASKING THE “ANGEL OF DEATH”, which you may view on Amazon here. *** Hailed by the New York Times as “a leading American investigator of Nazi war crimes,” Dr. David G. Marwell trained as an historian and then put his training to superb use outside the…
Read MoreJASON LUTES’S EPIC GRAPHIC NOVEL “BERLIN”
Jason Lutes is the creative force behind the blockbuster graphic novel BERLIN, which chronicles the German capital in the years of the Weimar Republic. Writing about BERLIN in Forbes magazine, Rob Salkowitz called Lutes’s book “one of the most ambitious, important and fully-realized works of graphic literature yet created, a real masterpiece of both story and art.” As…
Read MoreAUTHOR’S CORNER: HOLLY-JANE RAHLENS
(Holly-Jane Rahlens. Photo credit; Heike Barndt) Holly-Jane Rahlens graduated from my alma mater, Forest Hills High School in Queens, but ran off to Berlin where literary stardom found her, so if you understand predetermination, you’ll know why the two of us had no choice but to do this blog interview. An enchanting excerpt from Holly-Jane’s…
Read MoreNOVELIST’S CORNER: BINNIE KIRSHENBAUM
Novelist and short-story writer Binnie Kirshenbaum is a two-time Critics’ Choice Award winner as well as being a Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. Her keenly-anticipated and now widely-acclaimed novel RABBITS FOR FOOD portrays a writer named Bunny recovering from a breakdown. In her Boston Globe review of RABBITS FOR FOOD, novelist…
Read MoreGERMAN-JEWISH NOVELIST MIRNA FUNK
The German-Jewish author Mirna Funk was born in 1981 in East Berlin. These days, she splits her time between Berlin and Tel Aviv. Her first novel, WINTERNÄHE (pronounced Vinter-NAY-eh) has been critically acclaimed; it won the Uwe Johnson Literary Prize for 2015. Mirna also writes, among other things, a delightful column on Jewish life for German Vogue…
Read MoreINTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DEBORAH LIPSTADT
Author and educator Deborah Lipstadt counts among the contemporary public intellectuals I most admire. She is widely-known for her victory in a libel suit filed by Holocaust denier David Irving. Her superb book about that experience, HISTORY ON TRIAL: MY DAY IN COURT WITH A HOLOCAUST DENIER is the basis for the film DENIAL in which…
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