Jewish American Literature

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Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir recounting the author’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald during the last two years of World War II. The book was published in France in 1958; a shortened English translation was published in the United States in 1960.In 1944, the 15-year old Wiesel, his father, mother, and sisters were deported from the village of Sighet in Hungary and interned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration... Read Night Summary

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Anita Lobel is the author of No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War. First published in 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Award, the memoir details Lobel’s memories of growing up in Poland and how she survived World War II and the Holocaust. As the book follows Lobel from a child to a teen, it’s also a coming-of-age story and features themes about displacement and identity, as well as ideas like the differences... Read No Pretty Pictures Summary

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One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School is Scott Turow’s debut memoir, first published in 1977. The book is autobiographical and follows Scott’s first full year at Harvard Law School, where he experiences an intense learning curve and tumultuous emotions as he toils to keep pace with his classmates. The book gained attention for expressing the pitfalls of the Socratic method and is credited for popularizing the term... Read One L Summary

On Photography is a 1977 collection of seven essays by American scholar, activist, and philosopher Susan Sontag. The essays were published in the New York Review of Books from 1973 to 1977 before publication in a single volume. Sontag explores the history of photography and its relationship to reality, the fine arts, and sociopolitical power structures. Individual essays explore these various relationships between photography and the world through a different lens before the culminating exploration... Read On Photography Summary

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“People Like Us” was published in the September 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Using a series of examples to compare different areas of the United States, author and political commentator David Brooks argues that although America prides itself on being a diverse nation, its population actively self-segregates along multiple demographic lines.The essay begins by painting a picture of an unlikely community where “a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who... Read People Like Us Summary

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Presumed Innocent (1987) is Scott Turow’s first novel, originally published by Farrar Straus & Giroux. The hit novel stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks and is often credited as an early example of the modern legal thriller, helping to shape the genre’s conventions. Turow went on to publish 12 additional novels and three nonfiction works. He also continued to practice law, specializing in criminal defense, contrasting with Presumed Innocent’s protagonist... Read Presumed Innocent Summary

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Psycho (1959) is a horror novel by Robert Bloch and the inspiration for filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name, which came out one year later. While Hitchcock’s adaptation has largely eclipsed Bloch’s original in the public eye, fans of the film will recognize the basic plot and the major twists in Bloch’s novel. However, Bloch’s Norman Bates is (physically) unrecognizable from the version Anthony Perkins played on screen. Psycho is a slasher thriller... Read Psycho Summary

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“‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” one of Harlan Ellison’s most famous short stories, was published in Galaxy in 1965 and went on to win both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. Ellison (1934-2018) was an American speculative fiction and screenwriter whose works were influential in the development of New Wave science fiction. “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” uses nonlinear storytelling to depict a short-lived one-man rebellion against a dystopian future society. The story explores themes... Read "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman Summary

Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky evaluates the rise of income inequality in the US over the last 40 years. It argues that the main consequence of neoliberalism, which has increased since the 1970s, is a dramatic concentration of wealth and power to the elite—at the expense of the lower and middle classes. Chomsky observes how rapid financialization since the... Read Requiem for the American Dream Summary