Non-fiction options abound

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

American Jews and America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball by Larry Ruttman (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)

From the publisher (FP): Most fans don’t know how far the Jewish presence in baseball extends beyond a few famous players such as Greenberg, Rosen, Koufax, Holtzman, Green, Ausmus, Youkilis, Braun and Kinsler. In fact, that presence extends to the baseball commissioner Bud Selig, labor leaders Marvin Miller and Don Fehr, owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Stuart Sternberg, officials Theo Epstein and Mark Shapiro, sportswriters Murray Chass, Ross Newhan, Ira Berkow and Roger Kahn, and even famous Jewish baseball fans like Alan Dershowitz and Barney Frank.
The life stories of these and many others ... have been compiled from nearly 50 in-depth interviews and arranged by decade ... each person talks about growing up Jewish and dealing with Jewish identity, assimilation, intermarriage, future viability, religious observance, antisemitism and Israel. Each tells about being in the midst of the colorful pantheon of players who, over the past 75 years or more, have made baseball what it is....

From the JI (JI): Even if you know nothing about baseball, this is an interesting read. In particular, the thoughtfulness of the responses to questions about Judaism, Jewish identity and community are fascinating, and provide a unique aspect to the book. While text heavy, each chapter focuses on a different person, going from the 1930s to 2010s, so readers can jump around, making it easier to digest.

The Broken Gift by Daniel Friedmann (Inspired Books, 2013)

FP: Was Adam the first man? Was man created by divine act in less than one day almost 6,000 years ago, as the Bible suggests? Or did man appear 200,000 years ago as the culmination of numerous human-like species that existed during a span of millions of years, as the scientific record shows? Could both be true?... In The Broken Gift, author and aerospace engineer Daniel Friedmann examines the questions and provides an accurate gauge on which science and the Bible can come together....

JI: Using religious and scientific texts and analyses, Friedmann has created an equation that, in his view, solves one of the main problems in reconciling the two narratives of the world’s (and humankind’s) creation: time. The Broken Gift is an interesting thought experiment that also explains Friedmann’s views on the Flood story and its influence (or not) on human history, the number of languages spoken in the world, the free will vs. divinely ordained paradox, and humanity’s mission (and our progress towards the messianic era). While most skeptics won’t be convinced by Friedmann’s arguments, he does raise – and provide possible answers for – many questions that have long been debated.

The End of Growth: But is that All Bad? by Jeff Rubin (Random House Canada, 2012)

FP: In an urgent follow-up to ... Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, Jeff Rubin argues that the end of cheap oil means the end of growth.... [He is] certain that the world’s governments are getting it wrong. Instead of moving us toward economic recovery, measures being taken around the globe right now are digging us into a deeper hole. Both politicians and economists are missing the fact that the real engine of economic growth has always been cheap, abundant fuel and resources. But that era is over....

Rubin’s own equation is clear: with China and India sucking up the lion’s share of the world’s ever more limited resources, the rest of us will have to make do with less. But is this all bad?... Rubin points out that there is no research to show that people living in countries with hard-charging economies are happier, and plenty of research to show that some of the most contented people on the planet live in places with no-growth or slow-growth GDPs. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s bad or good, it’s the new reality: our world is not only about to get smaller, our day-to-day lives are about to be a whole lot different.

JI: In The End of Growth, Rubin articulately and matter-of-factly lays out his reasoning as to how the increasing cost of oil will affect our future consumption, employment, living standards in general. The harsh realities that such a slowdown would entail, some of which we see every time there is a recession but which would be more widespread and enduring in Rubin’s vision, are glossed over and, no doubt, another economist could find and support as many arguments for an alternate vision. Nonetheless, Rubin raises points that we should consider, and his “silver linings,” such as less pollution, more leisure time, increased employment/empowerment of women, etc., are comforting to contemplate when the realities that some of us are facing, such as stagnant wages and job loss, are bleak.

The Myth of the Muslim Tide by Doug Saunders (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2012)

FP: From the award-winning author and Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders, a short, powerfully argued debunking of the myth of the Muslim tide, which is being
deployed to dangerous effect by numerous commentators and politicians in Canada, the United States and Europe. Even among people who would never subscribe to its more dramatic claims, the “Eurabia” movement has popularized a set of seemingly common-sense assumptions about Muslim immigrants to the West: that they are disloyal, that they have a political agenda driven by their faith, that their high reproduction rates will soon make them a majority. These beliefs are poisoning politics and community relations in Europe and North America – and have led to mass murder in Norway. Rarely challenged, these claims have even slipped into the margins of mainstream politics. Doug Saunders believes it’s time to debunk the myth that immigrants from Muslim countries are wildly different and pose a threat to the West....

JI: The Myth of the Muslim Tide is an easy-to-read, well-laid-out book in which Saunders makes his points and supports them with demographic, survey, historical and other data. Divided into four sections, he first lays out some of the roots of the myths and the perceived ideological and existential threat to the West; he looks at what the data actually say about population growth, support for extremism, etc., among Muslims, and how they are integrating into Western societies; he examines how the attitudes to and fears about the Muslim “tide” are similar to the reactions towards other immigrant groups, notably Catholics and Jews; finally, he touches upon some of what he thinks are the real problems, such as the isolation and poverty of many new-immigrant neighborhoods, and why he believes that the terms multiculturalism and assimilation should be abandoned.

Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding (House of Anansi Press Inc., 2013)

FP: Part history, part biography, part true crime, Hanns and Rudolf chronicles the untold story of the Jewish investigator who pursued and captured one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious war criminals.

May 1945. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieut. Hanns Alexander, a German Jew now serving in the British army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. As kommandant of Auschwitz, Höss not only oversaw the murder of more than one million men, women and children, but he perfected Hitler’s program of mass extermination. On the run across a continent in ruins, Höss is the one man whose testimony can ensure justice at Nuremberg.

Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full ... account of Höss’ capture.... Moving from the Middle Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men – one Jewish, one Catholic – whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.

JI: By intertwining the stories of the two “protagonists,” alternating chapters from each man’s childhood to when Alexander apprehends Höss, Thomas Harding (Alexander’s great-nephew) not only invites parallels to be made about each man, but also discussion about nature versus nurture, about what makes one man (more or less) good and another (mostly) evil. The tension also builds, as readers anticipate Höss’ capture. The book includes Harding’s explanation of what led him on the six-year research and writing effort, summarizes Alexander’s postwar life and Hardy’s encounter with Höss’ daughter and grandson – at Auschwitz – which, despite its brevity, raises a whole host of other issues worthy of discussion.

Isaac’s Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland by Matthew Brzezinski (Random House, 2012)

FP: Starting as early as 1939, disparate Jewish underground movements coalesced around the shared goal of liberating Poland from Nazi occupation. For the next six years, separately and in concert, they waged a heroic war of resistance against Hitler’s war machine that culminated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Isaac’s Army, Matthew Brzezinski delivers the first-ever comprehensive narrative account of that struggle, following a group of dedicated young Jews – some barely out of their teens – whose individual acts of defiance helped rewrite the ending of the Second World War.

Based on first-person accounts from diaries, interviews and surviving relatives, Isaac’s Army chronicles the extraordinary triumphs and devastating setbacks that befell the Jewish underground from its earliest acts of defiance in 1939 to the exodus to Palestine in 1946. This is the remarkable true story of the Jewish resistance from the perspective of those who led it: Isaac Zuckerman, the confident and charismatic 24-year-old founder of the Jewish Fighting Organization; Simha Ratheiser, Isaac’s 15-year-old bodyguard, whose boyish good looks and seeming immunity to danger made him an ideal courier; and Zivia Lubetkin, the warrior queen of the underground....

Hunted by the Germans and bedeviled by the “Greasers” – roving bands of blackmailers who routinely turned in resistance fighters for profit – the movement was chronically short on firepower but long on ingenuity.... The money they raised helped thousands hide when the ghetto was liquidated. The documents they forged offered lifelines to families desperate to escape the horror of the Holocaust. And when the war was over, they helped found the state of Israel....

JI: It took Brzezinski three years to research and write Isaac’s Army and this aspect is important to remember, as the way in which the book is being marketed and that it has a “Cast of Characters” before its beginning chapter imply more fantasy than fact. The writing style is compelling, and the content has more human-interest aspects than historical writing usually does, such as who was having a relationship with whom among the resistance fighters, and the conflicts that existed within and between resistance groups. This makes it much more readable than many history texts – and as valuable as a resource, with more than 40 pages of notes in addition to the narrative.

The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger by Carolyn Gammon and Israel Unger (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013)

FP: At the beginning of the Nazi period, 25,000 Jewish people lived in Tarnow, Poland. By the end of the Second World War, nine remained. Like Anne Frank, Israel Unger and his family hid for two years in an attic crawl space. Against all odds, they emerged alive. Now, after decades of silence, here is Unger’s “unwritten diary.”

Nine people lived behind that false wall above the Dagnan flourmill in Tarnow.... Even at the end of the war, however, Jewish people emerging from hiding were not safe. After the infamous postwar Kielce pogrom, Israel’s parents sent him and his brother as “orphans” to France in a program called Rescue Children.... When the Unger family was finally reunited, they lived a precarious existence between France – as people sans pays – and England, until the immigration papers for Canada came through in 1951.

In Montreal ... Israel’s father, a co-owner of a factory in Poland, was reduced to sweeping factory floors. At the local yeshivah ... Israel discovered chemistry, and a few short years later he left poverty behind. He had a stellar academic career, married, and raised a family in Fredericton, N.B. The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger is as much a Holocaust story as it is a story of a young immigrant making every possible use of the opportunities Canada had to offer....
JI: Only a small portion of this memoir is about Unger and his family in hiding, though all of it is informed by that experience. Encouraged to write this book by co-author Carolyn Gammon, who also co-authored Johanna Krause Twice Persecuted (WLU Press, 2007), Unger was skeptical that his memories would be enough. However, Gammon’s questions and research elicit much. His memories about building a life in Canada, his search for more information about the past, his trips back to Tarnow, his experiences as a Holocaust-education speaker, etc., make for an interesting and educational read. There are many great photos, but not of good print quality, which is unfortunate.

Transcending Darkness: A Girl’s Journey Out of the Holocaust by Estelle Glaser Laughlin (Texas Tech University Press, 2012)

FP: “Please, Mama, I don’t want to live like this,” pleaded 13-year-old Estelle Glaser’s older sister as they watched the bodies of friends dangle from the gibbet in the centre of the appelplatz of the Madjanek concentration camp. “I cannot take the indignities and brutalities. Let’s step forward and make them kill us now.”

But Estelle’s mother fiercely responded to her two daughters: “No! Life is sacred. It is noble to fight to stay alive.”

Their mother’s indomitable will was a major factor in the trio’s survival in the face of brutal odds. But Estelle recognized other heroes in the ghetto and camps as well, righteous individuals who stood out like beacons and kept their spirits alive. Their father was one, as were hungry teachers in dim, cold rooms who risked their lives to secretly teach imprisoned children. Estelle herself learned to draw on a joyful past, and to bring her own light into the void.

Estelle’s memoir, published 64 years after her liberation from the Nazis, is a narrative of fear and hope and resiliency. While it is a harrowing tale of destruction and loss, it is also a story of the goodness that still exists in a dark world, of survival and renewal.

JI: Divided into three parts – War, Liberation, A New Dawn – Laughlin’s memoir is poetically written, its descriptions evoke not just place and time, but feeling, a smell, a chill, the excitement of discovering love again, the pain of betrayal. The third section reveals the happinesses and sadnesses that visit us even in a land of relative freedom.

Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor by Jafa Wallach (Gihon River Press, 2012)

FP: The four adults managed to survive for 22 agonizingly long months in the grave-like space ... with the help of Józef Zwonarz, the town’s mechanic. He alone knew of their hiding space and he alone had to secretly supply them with whatever food and water he could manage to sneak to them (mainly old potatoes and very small amounts of water). Jafa Wallach graphically describes the darkness, the hunger, the insects, and the constant fear of discovery. They had to be especially quiet since the hole they were in was located less than 20 feet from a Gestapo headquarters, the Ukranian militia and the German police in the small town of Lesko. In addition, Zwonarz and his workers were fixing Nazi vehicles on a daily basis and the Nazis were constantly in and around the building. Jafa recounts their terror when they realized they had to flee from their crumbling hole to a new hiding place. She then hauntingly describes their new struggles up until the liberation by Russian troops on Sept. 15, 1944.

JI: This memoir was written in 1959, but not published until decades later, in a limited run in 2006. Wallach’s daughter, Rena Bernstein, survived in hiding, separate from her parents, and she worked on the manuscript, fact-checking and returning to Poland, to see where her parents hid and to speak with those who still remembered. The result is a powerful, well-constructed narrative, which includes photographs, an afterword by Bernstein and a brief account of an aunt’s survival story.

But Hope is Longer: Navigating the Country of Breast Cancer by Tamara Levine (Second Story Press, 2012)

FP: After being diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer, Tamara Levine wrote the first of 11 letters she would send to family and friends throughout her “year from hell”: “The nightmare that hangs over every woman’s head has descended upon me. I have been transported to a new country like an unwilling (and unwitting) immigrant, even a deportee, uprooted from all that is familiar and dropped into a strange, inhospitable and dangerous land.”
Much more than a memoir, But Hope is Longer documents a personal odyssey that is also a universal one, offering insight, compassion, strategies and surprises that individuals, families and professionals dealing with cancer will find invaluable.... Confronted by the daunting labyrinth of the cancer care system, she fought to find a treatment plan that made sense for her. Above all, she strove to navigate and bring together the worlds of mainstream and complementary medicine. Tamara brings us the voices of her team of healers: her oncologists, surgeon, naturopathic doctor and life coach. They share their expertise, why they choose to do this work, how they cope with the inevitable losses, and their hopes and visions for cancer care.

JI: In But Hope is Longer, Levine writes about dealing with the disease, offering both her experiences and facts she learned about it throughout treatment, as well as the family dynamics, and how they were affected by her illness. There is much good advice in this memoir, written with compassion and understanding, and it would be helpful to both those diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness, as well as those whose loved one has received such a diagnosis.

Prefer poetry?

The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild
by Murray Reiss (Hagios Press, 2013)

From the publisher: With clarity and compassion, Murray Reiss painstakingly lays out the fabric of his pain, alienation and redemption as a child whose entire father’s family perished in the Holocaust. How his father’s “distance from the chimneys didn’t spare him; his distance from those smoke stacks was his disease.”

Reiss’ poems are poignant, yet darkly whimsical in their hard-earned knowledge of generational suffering. This is a powerful and fearless book that maps the uncertain terrain of memory and loss. We are richer for the strength of mind that Reiss conveys through his journey.

Turning the Corner at Dusk
by Jacquie Buncel (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010)

From the publisher: Turning the Corner at Dusk is a searing collection of poetry. Starting in Presov, Slovakia, we join Jacquie Buncel as she accompanies her father back to his boyhood home. With poems as clear as snapshots we move through Buncel’s growing understanding of the Holocaust and her connection with Judaism past and present. The collection ends with the celebration of new life as both she and her partner celebrate the births of their two daughters.

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