5 comments about Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey.

1. I teach high school in Brooklyn. The kids are sick of hearing about the Middle East on the news. They groaned when I said we were going to read some books about it. But I just ordered for my class "Coming Home to Jerusalem" because other teachers told me that their students learned so much and enjoyed this book.

   When my sister gave me her copy to read, I couldn't put it down. The history teacher, 12th grade, who teaches "gifted" students said that it was a big hit in her class. I look forward to seeing how my "kids" respond. A rare book that is for adults and smart kids as well. It's a classic, a keeper. 5 stars.




2. As an author myself, I understand how what looks easy on the page in fact takes years to perfect. Wendy Orange's book, "Coming Home to Jerusalem" may read as effortless but I can well imagine the work that went into making this lovely book, a combination personal adventure, cultural odyssey and political update from Israel.

   Given the current givens, some may think this is history. I prefer to think of this easy to read book as futuristic, what must eventually occur between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Especially I learned a lot from the dialogue groups she so vividly describes. Strangely, in the midst of a tortuous road, full of warring, I felt elated by her book because I saw what is inevitable, that the cycle of peace must return. Orange shows what that will look like. She also shows real characters which makes all the wanton violence now sadder. I hope most of her characters, and there are many, are still alive. High recommend.
   Five Stars for sure.




3. I really enjoyed this book. It was very well written and heartfelt, with unbiased, evocative descriptions of people and places. Made me want to hop on a plane and go there immediately!



4. "For hundreds of years large numbers of Arabs have lived in Palestine. Their fathers and fathers' fathers were born here. Palestine is their country where they want to live. We must acknowledge that fact with love."
   The surprising author of these lines was David Ben-Gurion, the legendary Zionist leader who became the first prime minister of the State of Israel.
   Ben-Gurion's compassionate words underscore one side of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that has threatened for decades
   to engulf not only the Middle East but the world. On the other
   hand there is the claim of the much-tormented Jewish people,whose historic ties to the very same land are even
   older.Surely they should be allowed to return to their homeland
   and live at lastin peace?
   Both claims are just. How can we judge justly between them? And
   how soon can we judge, if ever?
   Wendy Orange's memoir, "Coming Home To Jerusalem." is one
   woman's attempt to answer these questions, at least to her own
   satisfaction.

   Orange grew up in an ardently Zionist American Jewish family,
   but she did not share their enthusiasm for the idea of a Jewish
   state. Instead, she studied the Holocaust with great intensity.
   She became a professional therapist and, later, a journalist. In the early 1990s she was persuaded to attend a conference in
   Jerusalem. As a result of hearing a talk by famed novelist
   A.M.Yehoshua she decided to make aliya, or immigrate to Israel.
   Yehoshua's impact was all the more extraordinary in that his
   talk was delivered in Hebrew, a language whe did not yet
   understand.
   Working as a journalist in her adopted country, Orange made
   contact with her Palestinian counterparts and began to do
   stories from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. She
   was distressed by evidence of brutality on the part of Israel
   Defense Force soldiers. Such conduct does happen, as the writer
   of this review saw on a bus in Jerusalem once; but it is
   important to keep in mind the historical circumstances that have
   bred this kind of behavior.
   Orange kept her intellectual balance well--gazing at the
   looming Golan Heights, formerly Syrian-occupied, she understood
   what fear and physical suffering Syrian artillery once inflicted
   on Jewish farmers and fishermen from those same heights. And she
   felt a wave of sympathy for these victims, too, her own
   people.In a soul-trying situation she is revealed as not a
   hater of anyone.
   As suggested earlier, Orange's work may be seen as a search for what Slovakian Holocaust heroine Gisi Fleischmann described
   as "a better humanity." The search is pursued through a
   landscape deeply scarred by history, and punctuated by depths
   and heights almost impossible to imagine. An example of a height--a rare one--is the cautious euphoria generated by news of the
   Oslo Accords, with their elusive hope of peace at last between
   Israelis and Palestinians. The ultimate low may have been the
   asassination of Israeli Prime Ninister Itzhak Rabin--by a fellow
   Jew, albeit by one whose politics had nothing in common with
   those of his famous victim. It is the murder of Rabin which,
   even years later, seems to have been the most devastatingly
   successful blow against the Middle East peace process.
   Whether Wendy Orange's quest for justice and understanding will have a happier outcome than Gisi Fleischmann's remains to be
   seen. Perhaps she herself does not believe in the possibility,
   for at the end of her memoir she writes, "This drama has
   everything but an ending, I think."
   "Coming Home To Jerusalem" may be considered depressing by many.It is, on the other hand, an important read for those who wish to understand the human dimension of the Middle East
   tragedy. And it is beautifully written.




5. As an Israeli living in Maui, I was drawn back to Israel through this book. "Coming Home to Jerusalem actually made me want to go back home, to the city where I was born. (I'm a fourth generation Jerusalemite.) I felt that the author, an American, knew Israel of the 1990's even better than I did. Now, I'm en route "home" after years abroad. And I thank Wendy Orange for getting me in touch with my Zionism, my love for Israel despite all the problems she shows and I know. 5 Stars.

No comments about Anderson Cooper: Profile of a TV Journalist (Career Profiles).

4 comments about It's News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor.

1. By a person few-- outside U.S. publishing circles-- will know. The book is best when describing the high politics within major (mostly New York-based) magazines and papers. Sections on the author's youth and family will be of little real interest to most.
   
   While Mr. Kosner's ego is certainly large (dropping famous names is rampant), he does have the redeeming feature of not overstating the cosmic value of editors and reporters. They are there to get information out-- packaged in a way the public will buy it.



2. I enjoyed the sections on the youth and family of the author as well as those chapters following his career. The book is extremely well written. I bought it as a gift for my journalist son and decided to read it first and was pleasantly surprised that I liked it so much.



3. The name of Edward Kosner will doubtless fail to ring a bell in the minds of most Americans. This is because Kosner was a journalistic insider in the Eastern Establishment who preferred to work behind the scenes and also did not write much in the line of columns or any other work that bore his name.
   
   Edward Kosner held top editorial positions at such institutions as Esquire, New York, Newsweek and the New York Daily News. Kosner was in an excellent position to witness the ongoing decline of newspapers and newsmagazines as well as the rise of the Internet as a news source. Among other things, Kosner predicts that newspapers will increasingly become marginalized as a mass medium and come to have only a limited audience in what he calls the "educated elite."
   
   Kosner's book is rich in insight into the state of journalism today and about the practitioners of modern journalism. This is a most important book and as such is warmly recommended.



4. Mr Kosner details his rise to become an editor at several journalist institutions. The best part of this book is how he describes the non-glorifying and very anti-climatic process of being fired. it is never easy ona person and this author described that perfectly. The ending of this book which lists several traits that should define a person are an extra bonus with this book. It was smart to include in this book.

No comments about Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?: From the Projects to Prep School.

1 comments about The Element of Lavishness: Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1938-1978.

1. Sylvia Townsend Warner counted herself very lucky to have William Maxwell as her New Yorker editor and readers of this volume of their correspondence would agree Warner wrote 153 stories between 1936 and 1977 and found a devoted and discering fan in Maxwell. Many of the letters deal with both Warner's and Maxwell's writing. On occasion Maxwell has to gracefully reject one of Warner's stories (usually with the reassurance that the story is wonderful "but not for The New Yorker"). But what the reader comes to appreciate are the writers' accounts of momentous occasions and everyday life. Maxwell gives us wonderful accounts of an Adlai Stevenson rally and the Vietnam Moratorium. His account of the NYC blackout (in a letter dated November 17, 1965)is one of the best things I've ever read and worth the price of the book. It's such a seamless piece of writing, with each detail depending on what came before, that to quote bits of it would be to trivialize it.
   Maxwell, who lived with his wife and two daughters in NYC, is also good with domestic detail and affecting and funny observations. He relates a conversation in which his small daughter laments that he is bald."'Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?'" 'Yes," she says, teaching me a lesson."
   And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: ". . .And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."
   Townsend who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had her first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting him on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.
   He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."
   The volume is filled with fine writing and the reader wants very much to know these two people personally.

1 comments about John Steadman : Days in The Sun.

1. John Steadman is a venerable Baltimore Sun sportswriter who has shared his stories about sports superstars, fallen idols, unsung heroes, remembrances of good times and bad with an enthusiastic readership for more than 50 years. In John Steadman: Days In The Sun, Steadman shares historic moments in the worlds of football, baseball, golf, horse racing, boxing, and more. Here is "must" reading for all sports enthusiasts and Steadman fans.

5 comments about Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew.

1. I read the book. I kept thinking throughout, this guy is lonely, single, in his 40's, redeeming himself in the hope of finding a nice jewish wife.
   
   I don't really believe most of his account.
   
   This could have been posted on eharmony.



2. This is an honest and moving account of a man's journey away from and back to his Jewish roots. It's a story of redemption, and of the restoration of a father-son relationship.
   
   You don't need to be Jewish (or speak Yiddish) to enjoy this book. In fact, gentiles may find that this book helps them understand some of the challenges and contradictions faced by modern Jews who seek to connect with their ancient faith.
   
   Karlen's very conversational writing style makes this book an easy read. His own humor, plus one-liners borrowed from Henny Youngman and Steven Wright, provide comic relief despite the very serious issues addressed in this book.
   
   At the end of the book I found myself wishing there were just a few more chapters (and perhaps a soundtrack album so we could hear this "nigguns" mentioned in the book). This is the story of a journey that seems to end before the final destination has been reached. Perhaps that's because the journey continues. But while it may seem a little unfinished, it is nonetheless a very satisfying book.



3. I agree in particular with what reviewer Adamchik aready stated about this book. The book would be more understandable to me if Karlen came from a less knowledgeable background. In fact, it's difficult to ascertain whether his background is Orthodox, Conservative, or somewhere inbetween. While there are people who were raised Orthodox who go "off the derech", that doesn't totally appear to be the case here. And then, Rabbi Friedman takes over the story. I've had the priviledge of hearing him speak - he is awesome, even if I'm not personally into Lubavitch. But all in all, the book seems a bit directionless, even if it is painful/funny at times.



4. This is a must read for all people who struggle with religion and have to deal with the "fakers" who give religion a bad name.
   You don't have to be Jewish to understand Neal's journey back to the fold.
   
   In my personal life, my wife and I struggle with those who forget what religion means. Karlen sums it all up with the "It's not Judaism that I don't like; it's the Jews." He follows up with his quest to me a "mentsch," which is Yiddish for an upstanding person. My wife and I couldn't agree more.
   
   We live in a world today where many of us have lost our moral compass. We judge wach other by what neighborhood they live in, the clothes on their backs, the car they drive and where they send their kids to school or camp. What happened to family values? Respect for our fellow man? Or the power of silence - when we should just shut up.
   
   There's a little bit of Neal's Yiddishe Hartz (Jewish heart) in all of us. This should be a must read for all those trying to keep up with the Jones, Schwartzes, etc.



5. In many ways, I could relate to the author not feeling like a part of a congregation in the Minneapolis suburb he resides in. Congregations in suburban North Shore seemed similar to what the author experienced -- ornate and fashionable but not very warm. What's frustrating about this story, which is filled with some good Jewish humor, is that the author's journey just didn't seem all that realistic.
   
   He's disconnected from Judaism, in fact, he loathes it and practically himself for being a Jew. But his catharsis really occurs as he begins studying with a Hasidic rabbi he once interviewed for a story. He learns a lot from the rabbi, but there's something about the writing that never really relays just why he dove back into the religion and why what the rabbi did worked. In the end, though, he has a mild awakening whereby his character is redeemed when he invites his father to partake in a nearly-forgotten family tradition and he then successfully guides a young Hebrew student to a successful Bat Mitzvah.

2 comments about The Bookbinder: More Stories from the Road.

1. As I read The Bookbinder, I felt as if Jackie Cooper was sitting there talking to me. I kept wanting to respond--to tell him the things we have in common. I laughed aloud while reading some of the anecdotes, like the one about getting his coat caught in a newspaper vending machine, and smiled at others. A few brought me near tears. His book isn't a thriller, but if heartwarming and uplifting are what you're looking for, read it.



2. I've known Jackie for years and all his books open doors to a past that all of us share to one degree or another. You see faces you've forgotten, streets you once walked, places you've been. Whether they are the actual faces, streets or places, you feel as though you've shared them all with Jackie and his characters.

5 comments about Sincerely, Andy Rooney.

1. Mr. Rooney is always both clever, and humorous in dealing with any issue, especially those pesky little inconveniences that bother us all but which most of us choose to ignore.
   In this book Mr. Rooney has collected his responses, to letters other people have written to him, and presented them to us with very little fuss or filling. Occasional he prefaces one of his letters with a note to let us know the background.
   Taken as a whole, these missives make an interesting overview of his life and career. Some are extremely funny, while others make you think deeply about the odd situations we all find ourselves facing.
   Mr. Rooney is at his best when he is just being cantankerous and his cunningly witty self. He is not nearly so good when he tries to vindicate his beliefs with logic or reason.
   If you are a religious person, you will probably be offended by his letter to his children.



2. It's time for Rooney to ride off into the sunset. The longer he stays, the more he shows himself to be a pathetic wanna be. Goodbye Andy and don't let the door hit you in the wallet.



3. Rooney's best book is this one. Extremely entertainng, it shows Rooney's impatience and wittiness. Although most letters serve a purpose, some letters are fluff, others are a bit boring, and some just too ridiculous. Nonetheless, we see just some of Rooney's world outside of television and his satrical commentary on government, media, viewers and people trying to sell something.
   
   If you don't like his commentary, you'll find this collection of letters pretty similar, so you won't like this book. However if you don't regularly watch his commentary but appreciate his sense of humor, this book is definately better than his appearances on 60 minutes.



4. Andy Rooney is America's Grouch. He's a brilliant writer, humorist and commentator who has experienced just about everything and has little time to suffer fools gladly. Many of the letters in this book involve Rooney's response to criticism or undue demands of his time with his acid wit. It's clear that Rooney hangs up an "off duty" sign when he leaves the office and considers his private life his own and no one else's. Don't sneer -- it's not easy to write entertaining negative correspondence. Ann Coulter has consistently shown that a snarling, bitter and hateful person's rants about people she hates is as dull as plain oatmeal when it doesn't have any sense, compassion, intelligence or wit behind it. Andy Rooney's has entertained a lot of people and offended most people -- one gets the impression while reading this book that that is exactly what he sets out to do with his writings. One letter in particular -- a rant about organized religion to his children -- is refreshing during this time when phony Christians pontificate self righteously to others without practicing, or even understanding, what they preach.
   
   However, the letters that stay with me are those positive letters that show Rooney's vulnerable side. There are many letters, for example, that show his soft spot for fellow veterans of World War II. The war was clearly the defining period in Rooney's life -- a time when he forged the majority of his lasting friendships. What's nice is that Rooney's discussions of this time in his letters aren't self-congratulatory ego pieces. They do, however, beautifully show the bond between the servicemen who fought that war and, in all likelyhood, saved democracy.
   
   However, my favorite letter deals with longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who was a close friend of Rooney's that he wrote on the occasion of Caen's death in 1995. As a Bay Area native, I fondly remember Herb Caen's column -- a beloved staple of life in San Francisco that will never be replaced. So many tributes to the recently deceased, though well meaning, degenerate into sappy, saccharine love notes with cliches in place of real feelings. Rooney, however, instead tells of all the wonderful times he had with Caen, including a hilarious run-in with William Randolph Hearst, Jr. from whose paper, the San Francisco Examiner, Caen defected to work at the Chronicle. It's not sappy and Rooney doesn't even mention his sadness at Caen's passing until the last paragraph. But it is very touching nevertheless as it's clear that Rooney will dearly miss his old friend.
   
   That humanity shines through and lets the reader know, in no uncertain terms, that Rooney is a compassionate and caring person who values and cherishes his friends and family. But keep that a secret ... it might ruin Andy Rooney's reputation.



5. His letter about religion to his children is beautiful. It is as classic an attack on it's obsurdity as any shown by Sagan, Edison, Paine, or Mark Twain.
   And his claiming patriotism and religion as two major problems in the world is prophetic.
   I love that old man. What a treasure he is.

3 comments about American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson.

1. I picked this book up by mistake several years ago. I thought it was a bio of Dorothy Parker. It was possibly the best mistake I ever made. Thompson is now a forgotten figure, somehow escaping the accolades heaped upon her peers.

   Yet she was a fantastic and inovative woman, breaking new career paths and new ideas. Sure, she wasn't the most likeable of people. But with Thompson that's not the point.

   This book has sent me on a five year quest to gather all of the information I can about her, from her book "I Saw Hitler" to collections of her essays. I've been on a tangential search for every thing relating to her I can get my hands on.

   And it's all because Kurth wrote a spectacular and engaging biography.




2. If you ask the average American to name a female reporter, most will be hard-pressed to name anyone besides Dear Abby or Ann Landers. These two "Agony Aunts" were sisters and today their daughters and others write their columns. Few Americans can name a woman journalist.
   
   The history of discrimination against women journalists goes back to colonial America. Then came Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman who wrote under the pen name of Nellie Bly. She showed that a woman journalist could do serious muckraking. Her example inspired Dorothy Thompson who was born July 9,1893 in Lancaster, New York.
   
   Peter Kurth has written an excellent biography of this pioneering woman journalist, tracing her life from her childhood in western New York, her journalism career, and marriages and divorces. After divorcing her first husband Josef Bard, she married author Sinclair Lewis in 1928. She divorced Lewis in 1942.
   
   In 1920, she traveled to Europe and wrote free-lance pieces for several U.S. newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor. In 1924, the Philadelphia Public Ledger appointed her their Berlin bureau chief, which made Thompson the first woman to head a major overseas news bureau.
   
   She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany (in 1934), and began a crusade against dictatorship and other forms of fascism. Concerning our current U.S. president, she predicted:
   
   "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce'. But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!' "



3. Dorothy Thompson's second husband was Sinclair Lewis. In their lifetimes she was as famous as he was. Their marriage was not a success. They had a son, Michael. Her curiosity and energy lifted DT to the top of the heap of journalists of the pre-WW II and post-WW II era. She was a foreign correspondent and a columnist. She liked the company of men because men did interesting things. She died in Portugal visiting her grandchildren. For many years she had a farmhouse in Vermont and arranged for friends to settle in the area. Rebecca West was an epistolary confidant.
   
   After Thompson wrote I SAW HITLER she was expelled from Berlin. There is an enormous archive of her work at Syracuse University, her alma mater. Her father, a Methodist minister, possessed generosity of spirit. Just out of college, Thompson worked for a women's suffrage organization in New York State. At age twenty-seven she went to Europe. It was 1920. She could send the American newspapers travel articles or stories about the peace in the days following WW I. In London she and her friend Barbara DePorte went to the International News Service offering to cover an upcoming conference on Zionism.
   
   In Paris Dorothy became friends with Rose Wilder Lane. Paul Scott Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News advised her to leave Paris where there were numerous American writers to corner the market in another European city. Dorothy Thompson chose Vienna. She was guileless and frank interviewing leaders. In Hungary she met M. Fodor, the Guardian's special correspondent. She met Czech leaders Benes and Masaryk. In 1921 Dorothy Thompson became a salaried correspondent in Vienna for the Public Ledger. Politics was failing as a remedy in Austria and the surrounding countries. In 1922 Austria received a huge recovery loan. In 1923 she married Joseph Bard, a Hungarian. In 1926 Thompson met Vincent Sheean. At the salon of Eugenia Schwarzwald Dorothy got to know Arnold Schoenberg, Adolf Loos, Bertholt Brecht, Oskar Kokoschka and others. In 1925 she was transferred to Berlin. Between 1924 and 1929 the mark was stabilized. In 1927 Joseph and Dorothy were divorced.
   
   It was known in literary society that Sinclair Lewis was an alcoholic. Dorothy was doubtful about undertaking to marry Lewis. Prior to the marriage she was in Moscow at the same time as Scott Nearing, Anna Louise Strong, and Theodore Dreiser. After being in Europe for seven years, she was suffering from a failure of nerve. Twin Farms had three hundred acres and two farmhouses. In 1928 the whole state of Vermont had the population of Jersey City. The life of the couple was not glittering. In 1930, pregnant, Dorothy Thompson knew her marriage would not be a marriage. Following a summer in Vermont, the couple rented a house in Westport from FPA.
   
   1930 was the year of the Nobel Prize. Dorothy found that the Germany of 1931 had been transformed. She produced pieces for the Saturday Evening Post on the new Germany. She was horrified to see nationalist regression. After three years Lewis gave up on his labor novel and wrote ANN VICKERS. Dorothy and every observer underestimated the Nazis. They were banal. In 1936 Dorothy became a political columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and later for the New York Post.
   
   The movie WOMAN OF THE YEAR was plainly modeled on Dorothy Thompson. Maxim Kopf was her third husband. He was Czech, born in Vienna, raised in Prague. The wedding took place at the Universalist Church in Barnard, Vermont. After the war Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson regarded themselves as a United Front in the Age of Lunacy. By 1948 DT thought there were too many lawyers and not enough statesmen running the country.