Jewish American Literature

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is an exploration of what people eat and why. Pollan is an immersive journalist who has studied and written on a wide range of topics including gardening, food, architecture, and psychedelics. Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Each of Pollan’s books examines the intersection of humans and nature. Pollan’s 2001 book... Read The Omnivore's Dilemma Summary

Hannah Arendt’s 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism is an examination of the origins and ideologies of Nazism and Stalinism in the first half of the 20th century through an examination of antisemitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. Arendt charts the emergence of the Nazi and Bolshevik totalitarian regimes and how those regimes operated as governments. Arendt asserts that imperialism, not nationalism, created the framework for the success of totalitarian movements, and she claims that totalitarian movements capitalized... Read The Origins of Totalitarianism Summary

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In Norton Juster’s 1961 middle-grade fantasy adventure The Phantom Tollbooth, a bored young boy visits a magical land whose people suffer from a strange delusion and volunteers to find a source of wisdom that can heal them. The book is a touchstone for generations of young readers; it has sold nearly five million copies in more than a dozen languages and has been adapted for film, stage, and symphony hall. Author Juster published a dozen... Read The Phantom Tollbooth Summary

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is a 1974 biography of American urban planner Robert Moses, written by journalist Robert Caro. The book charts the rise of Moses in the New York political system, illustrating how he came to shape the city according to his own designs. The book was widely praised by critics and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, though Moses and his associates disagreed with several points... Read The Power Broker Summary

The Princess Bride is a 1973 adventure novel by American author and screenwriter William Goldman. It uses a unique framing narrative to tell two interwoven stories and claims to be a retelling of an older novel (one that does not actually exist). The Princess Bride was adapted into a film in 1987. Critics regard the film as one of the greatest cinematic accomplishments of all time, and it appears on numerous “best of” lists, including... Read The Princess Bride Summary

The Red Tent (1997) is an adult historical novel by Jewish American author Anita Diamant. It describes the life of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, who appears in the biblical Book of Genesis. While her mention in the Bible only concerns her abduction by a Canaanite man and her brothers’ act of atrocity in response, Diamant imagines a full life for Dinah—including a childhood raised by several mothers, her first marriage, and life in Egypt, where... Read The Red Tent Summary

“The Rememberer,” by American author Aimee Bender, is a short story that uses conventions of magical realism to explore the themes of Thought Versus Feeling, Love and Obligation, and The Sublime Quality of Loss. First published in the September 1, 1997, issue of The Missouri Review, the piece later appeared in Bender’s award-winning short story collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998). Bender uses first-person point-of-view to tell the story of Annie, a woman... Read The Rememberer Summary

The Reptile Room is a middle-grade novel published by Daniel Handler under the pen name of Lemony Snicket in 1999. It is the second in the 13-book series A Series of Unfortunate Events, which chronicles the lives of the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus, and baby Sunny) after the untimely death of their parents. In the first book, a well-intentioned but oblivious man named Mr. Poe places the children under the care of their distant relative... Read The Reptile Room Summary

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Wise-cracking eighth-grader Anthony “Antsy” Bonano befriends Calvin Schwa, a nondescript boy who is virtually invisible to his classmates in Neal Shusterman’s humorous young adult novel, The Schwa Was Here (2004). As Antsy and the Schwa experiment on his invisibility, they meet the crotchety neighborhood recluse Old Man Crawley and fall for his granddaughter, Lexie, who is blind. Antsy learns about the Schwa’s challenging family life and makes discoveries about his own sense of self, his... Read The Schwa Was Here Summary

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The Septembers of Shiraz (2007), a novel by Iranian writer Dalia Sofer, recounts the experiences of the Amins, an Iranian Jewish family, during the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s. The book is closely based on Sofer’s family history: When Sofer was 10, her family fled Iran, crossing the border to Turkey with the help of smugglers. The Septembers of Shiraz depicts the changing atmosphere and events that characterize the treatment of the wealthy class... Read The Septembers Of Shiraz Summary

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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is a 2013 novel by Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere, Young Jane Young, Out of the Easy, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) that centers on the titular character, owner of a bookshop on Alice Island, a fictional island off the coast of Massachusetts. A.J. Fikry’s stubborn and bitter personality is on full display at the start of the story when he learns that his favorite publisher’s agent has died—and been replaced by... Read The Storied Life Of Aj Fikry Summary