I
grew up hearing about this book all the time, often spotting it on my
sister’s bookshelf, but I didn’t pick it up until this year while doing research
for my next book. My only regret is that I didn’t read it sooner!
Potok’s tale
of friendship in the years during and after the Second World War is as
heartwarming and optimistic as it is fraught with poignant commentary about the
divides of religion.
Even those individuals who subscribe to the same faith
may often find themselves on opposite ends of observance and ideology. As the old
saying goes, “Two Jews, three opinions.”
“Anyone who finds it is finding a jewel. Its themes are profound and universal.”—The Wall Street Journal
It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again. . . .
I
picked this book up during my honeymoon in Italy and could barely put it down.
And that’s saying a lot when you’re sitting on a balcony in picturesque
Positano! In any case, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a sucker for
anything to do with tracking down Nazi war criminals after World War II, and this book checks all the boxes.
When his famed Nazi-hunting uncle suddenly
dies with unfinished business, CIA analyst Aaron Wiley travels to South America
to bring justice to a sadistic German doctor who escaped. There’s just one
problem: he begins to fall in love with his target’s daughter.
'Heartrending . . . An engrossing read' FINANCIAL TIMES
SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE THIRD REICH
Max Weill has never forgotten the face of Otto Schramm, a doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max's family to the gas chambers.
A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
When Schramm escaped to South America after the war, Max swore to one day bring him back to Germany to stand trial. With his life now nearing its end, he asks his nephew Aaron Wiley - a CIA…
I
began reading this book in anticipation of the Martin
Scorsese film and found myself utterly enthralled by a dark and bloody chapter
of American history I never even knew existed.
The conspiratorial mistreatment
and murder of the Osage people for their oil-rich land in Oklahoma should be
part of the standard curriculum in classrooms throughout the United States.
The
tragedy of Mollie Burkhart serves as a chilling microcosm of the
innumerable injustices wrought against
the indigenous peoples of this continent.
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover…
The Korean War rages on. Protesting the bloody conflict, a
Korean-American man, William Yang, blows himself up in the middle of an LA department store just before Christmas, leading the US government to
reopen the internment camps used during World War II. President Joseph
McCarthy's America has never been more on edge, paranoid, and, above all,
dangerous.
Weeks later, a woman hires Morris Baker, now working as a private investigator,
to track down her missing husband, Henry Kissinger, who may have a shadowy
connection to Yang's purported terrorist attack.
The ensuing investigation for
the absent State Department consultant working for Vice President Richard
Nixon sends Baker on another thrilling adventure of deceit, intrigue, sex,
murder, and conspiracy where the safety of the world may hang in the
balance.
