In the aftermath of October 7, Ferdinand Draxler walks the streets of London in despair. Everything has changed - the sights, the sound, the spirit. He too is not who he was. Is he at the crossroads of history or is it just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature? The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who sees him as complicit in genocide, Draxler fixates on bad news. He shouts at the television. He carries his own tin of paint to cover up graffiti. The staffroom at the primary school of which he is headmaster has become a battlefield of inflamed opinion he does nothing to quiet. His wife, Charmian, is a beacon of calm, but even she isn't sure she can save Ferdie from himself. 'Don't worry about me,' he tells her. 'I don't have what it takes to go mad.' -- Source other than Library of Congress.

The oral history of a renowned Czech writer, whose optimism and faith in people survived grueling experiences under authoritarian regimes. Heda Margolius Kovály (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street --based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression--was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovály and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestíková. In it, Kovály recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slánsky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovály, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestíková has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan.

The dread shadow of Nazism falls upon the Carnovsky family, three generations of Jews who believe themselves totally assimilated into German society. David, who has prospered in "enlightened, civilized" Berlin and considers himself "more German than the Germans”, cannot rationalize the momentous events engulfing him. His son Georg, a famous doctor, taught by his father to be "Jewish at home, a German in the street", is stripped of his practice, his possessions, and ultimately his illusions. And his young son Jegor is pulled between his love for the fatherland and the Jewishness he scorns. A tragedy of torn loyalties, this powerful and panoramic novel has become one of the classics of our time.

Now in paperback, Being Jewish and Doing Justice expands the standard concept of Jewish Studies. The prologue offers a novel reading of the idea of 'the people of God, ' placing the people firmly 'in the world.' In this spirit, the book brings argument to bear on a broad range of contemporary moral, social, and political controversies, many of them turning on puzzles about identity. The scope extends from Judaism, Zionism, and anti-Semitism to the language of race, the status of animals, and the rights of the child. Drawing on his training as an academic philosopher, his Jewish education, and his personal experience, author Brian Klug confronts uncomfortable questions with rigor, candor, and humor. And while the chapters are not a series of steps in an overall argument, collectively they develop the title theme: the inner connection between being Jewish and doing justice. Topical and controversial, the issues discussed include: whether anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism * Herzl's Jewish opponents in the East End * if anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are inextricably entangled * what draws America to Israel and what ties Israel to Auschwitz * how the climate of debate about Israel among Jews can be improved * Israel's 'right to exist' * the 'race question' on the UK census form * Arthur Balfour's take on 'the Jewish race' * ethnicity in America * Black-Jewish relations in Chicago * popular attitudes in Britain towards the 'ritual' slaughter of animals * the treatment of animals in the abattoir and laboratory.