J.
Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant and fascinating personality. This biography
is one of the finest, most complete, and most interesting biographies that you
will ever read, and its subject matter is something we all need to know more
about – the atomic age, national security, the FBI, and fear of Communism.
Its topic is fascinating, the research is
extremely deep and complete, and the analysis is balanced and convincing. We
all need to know more about the birth of the atomic age and the politics
surrounding it.
Physicist and polymath, 'father of the atom bomb' J. Robert Oppenheimer was the most famous scientist of his generation. Already a notable young physicist before WWII, during the race to split the atom, 'Oppie' galvanized an extraordinary team of international scientists while keeping the FBI at bay. As the man who more than any other inaugurated the atomic age, he became one of the iconic figures of the last century, the embodiment of his own observation that 'physicists have known sin'.
Years later, haunted by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer became a staunch opponent of plans to develop the hydrogen bomb.…
Immigration has been
(and is) one of the most important themes in US history, and this book (written
in English by the editor of New York City’s Yiddish newspaper at that time) is
an engrossing story of the experience of a Russian Jewish immigrant, who fled
pogroms in Russia to seek his fortune in America. It is a classic.
Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction of rising to the top of the business world, where he discovers the high price of assimilation. Author Abraham Cahan founded and edited the Jewish Daily Forward,…
Historical memory – especially the way we
remember evil deeds or troubling eras from the past – is very important in our
present society, and this is one of the finest books about the process of
making and changing historical memory. I recommend it to to readers interested in Germany, the Holocaust, or the US Civil War.
'An ambitious and engrossing investigation of the moral legacies which stubbornly refuse to pass' Brendan Simms
As the western world struggles with its legacies of racism and colonialism, what can we learn from the past in order to move forward?
Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman, who grew up as a white girl in the American South during the civil rights movement, is a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. In clear and gripping prose, she…
This
book has stimulating analyses of ten prominent leaders of the 19th
century – all of whom were deeply involved with the key issues of slavery,
race, and equality. The essays are lively, interesting, and will challenge your
understanding of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick
Douglass, Stephen Douglass, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley,
Albion Tourgee, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
