For the most part, this page will reflect what I post about my reading on Goodreads. Frankly, what I’m posting are really brief notes, not book reviews.
The most recent reading is listed first.
- Sarah Longwell, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time (St. Martin’s Press, 2026). If you’re trying to understand American voters, let Sarah Longwell be your guide.
- Joann Sfar, To Life: A Cartoonist’s Journal in the Aftermath of October 7th (trans. Montana Kane; 23rd St., 2026). A difficult book to write about. I’m just grateful that it’s been published.
- Sarah Tuttle-Singer, Fairy Lights in God’s Backyard: A Jerusalem Love Story (Vayinafash Press, 2026). A lyrical love letter to the author’s beloved city.
- Richard Chess, The Loneliest Monk: Poems (Orison Books, 2026). Always a joy to immerse in one of Rick Chess’s collections.
- Jordan Salama, Stranger in the Desert: A Family Story (Catapult, 2024). Aptly summarized in the jacket copy: “A young writer embarks on an epic quest through the Argentine Andes in search of a family heritage that spans hemispheres and centuries, from the Jewish Levant to turn-of-the-century trade routes in South America.”
- Theo Baker, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University (Penguin Press, 2026). Eye-opening account of Stanford University, 2022-2026—including how a first-year student’s investigative reporting led to the end of a university presidency.
- Dara Horn, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story to the Living (Avid Reader Press, 2026). Even more brilliant — and essential — than I anticipated. Complimentary advance review copy.
- Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages (The Jewish Quarterly, July 2026). This 86-page book is the July 2026 edition of The Jewish Quarterly, to which I subscribe. Courageous, timely, and highly informative.
- Danila Botha, Vidal (At Bay Press, 2026). I received this graphic novel as a gift from the author (I’m also mentioned in the acknowledgments). And I’ll tell you what I have told her: I hold special admiration for author-illustrators, not least because I have some inkling as to how difficult it is to be just ONE of those two things (I’m a competent writer; I have no visual-art skills whatsoever). The idea of having so much talent and dedication and using them to create something so truly beautiful honestly overwhelms me. But Danila Botha has done it. And the protagonist’s trajectory is unlike any I have seen to date–going from pre-state Israel to Europe and then to Canada. I also admire the way the author has chosen to frame the narrative of Vidal’s story (I’m not going to spoil that discovery for you). I’m told that some minor proofreading oversights will be remedied in the next edition. But you needn’t wait to immerse yourself in the power and beauty of this book. Complimentary copy.
- Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (revised and expanded; Jonathan David Publishers, 2000). With my mother’s death in June, I have found myself for the first time in the position of one of the “official” mourners in Jewish tradition (when one has lost a parent, spouse, sibling, or child). It soon became clear to me how little I knew; a Torah study “classmate” recommended this book to me. To say that I learned a lot about our death and mourning traditions is an understatement.
- Fran Fabriczki, Porcupines: A Novel (Summit Books, 2026). A lively read that I encountered through my Jewish Book Council Nu Reads subscription.
- Nicholas Lemann, Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries (Liveright, 2026). Simply magnificent. In a just literary world, this book would receive multiple awards beyond those specifically for Jewish books. Time will tell.
- Howard Jacobson, Howl (Jonathan Cape, 2026). A darkly comic depiction of the madness that so many Jews in the Diaspora have encountered/experienced since October 7, 2023. Published in the author’s native Britain in early March, the novel is as yet unpublished in the United States.
- Yevgenia Nayberg, Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters (Neal Porter Books, 2026). A terrific graphic memoir by a gifted artist-writer.
- Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again (Random House, 2026). An incomprehensibly incandescent combination of gutting and inspiring reading.
- Sarah Stern, Dear Letters in the Red Box: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2026). Lovely poems. Gift copy.
- Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage (Dial Press, 2026). An absorbing read.
- Michael Lowenthal, Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation (Mad Creek Books, 2026). As a fan of Lowenthal’s previous work (the novel Charity Girl in particular), I was eager to learn that this essay collection was on the way, particularly when I discovered that elements would focus on Lowenthal’s German-Jewish heritage (and his recovery thereof). Those essays in particular held my attention, as did others that alighted on formative moments in Lowenthal’s literal and life journeys (his sojourn with a Pennsylvania Amish family is one such standout). Together, the essays indeed, powerfully and provocatively, “chronicle [Lowenthal’s] quest for orientation in the world: as an agnostic Jew, as a queer traveler and lover, and as a writer who can tell or twist the truth.” Complimentary advance copy.
- Allegra Goodman, This Is Not About Us: Fiction (Dial Press, 2026). An excellent Nu Reads selection. Beautifully written linked short stories. (One of the stories seemed slightly out of place to me until the link occurred to me after I’d finished reading.)
- Ruth Traubner Kessler, The Country of Elsewheres (Broadstone Books, 2025). Beautiful poems. Gift copy.
- Owen Lewis, A Prayer of Six Wings (Dos Madres Press, 2025). I’ll admit that on a craft level, the lineation and breaks in this collection sometimes mystified me (an issue I often have when reading contemporary poetry). But as a reader, I just fell into this incredible book of post-October 7 poems. If only everything about this era that is being written, and read, contained such empathy and beauty.
- Iddo Gefen, Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory: A Novel (trans. Daniella Zamir, Astra House, 2025). Like his creation Mrs. Lilienblum, Iddo Gefen is so brilliantly inventive that I’m not always sure that I can keep up with what he’s developing. But I’m always impressed, and grateful!
- Esther Chehebar, Sisters of Fortune: A Novel. (Random House, 2025). There are not many novels set within the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn. That alone renders this highly readable debut noteworthy.
- Sam Sussman, Boy from the North Country: A Novel (Penguin Press, 2025). A novel that reads like a memoir, with exceptionally beautiful prose. This is one case where the jacket copy seems to sum it up accurately: “Inspired by the author’s own uncertain celebrity paternity, Boy from the North Country is an emotionally searing meditation on the most essential human themes: loss, healing, memory, and the redemptive power of love.”
- Elisa Boxer, Under the Rubble: The Hidden Letters of the Warsaw Ghetto (illus. Oksana Drachkovska; Apples & Honey Press, 2026). The story of the Oneg Shabbat/Ringelblum Archive is one that I came to learn relatively recently, in middle age. It has affected me profoundly, and I now teach it (in courses on Holocaust Literature and Jewish Life Writing) to college students. For that purpose, I rely largely on Samuel Kassow‘s essential scholarship; online resources from institutions including Yad Vashem and the Jewish Historical Institute; and the remarkable film Who Will Write Our History? (available freely in an abbreviated educational version via Facing History and Ourselves, which incorporates the film as part of a unit for secondary students in grades 7-12)./How to tell this story in a picture book intended for significantly younger children, however, would be something beyond my capacities. I’m both immensely grateful and immensely impressed that author Elisa Boxer, illustrator Oksana Drachkovska, and Apples & Honey Press have taken up the challenge./From my adult viewpoint, they’ve done an outstanding job. As with the film, they’ve relied on one of the members of Ringelblum’s team—in this case, Hersh Wasser; in the film, Rachel Auerbach—to help anchor the story of the preservation of community experience and history. Wasser and Auerbach were two of the only three Oneg Shabbat members to survive the war, and the images here of the postwar recovery of (some) of the hidden materials hit my heart as powerfully as the newsreels and reenactment in the film./This is a beautiful book. How it will land with the young children who are its ostensible audience, I cannot predict; once the book is published, I will be looking for “reports from the field,” so to speak. In the meantime, I hope that every parent, educator, and caregiver with more direct experience in that realm will become aware of this book, and share it with younger readers as they deem appropriate. Complimentary advance review copy.
- Samantha Ellis, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture (Pegasus Books, 2026). A love letter to the author’s Iraqi-Jewish heritage–linguistic and culinary, especially. Complimentary advance review copy.
- Zeeva Bukai, The World Between: A Novel (Delphinium Books, 2026). Bukai’s second novel (after last year’s lauded The Anatomy of Exile), is quite different from the debut, but no less stunning. This more slender book wraps the reader within a less populated tableau—fewer characters and storylines—but an equally exquisitely-crafted story. I’m so grateful for the sneak peek and the opportunity to immerse myself in these pages, and I’m eager to follow the discussions that it will evoke. Complimentary advance review copy.