Reviews
In our submissions guidelines we say to reviewers that our goal is not to learn about the book (or movie, dance, play, etc.) being reviewed, but for the reviewer to use the book as a pretext to teach us something about the nature of reality as understood by the reviewer and perhaps stimulated by the book. A tall order. See how we are doing:
Books
Strategy and Memory for Progressive Believers
by Christian Iosso
Gary Dorrien's latest book, Economy, Difference, Empire, is an indictment of imperialist fantasies, enormous suffering visited on others, and the “shredding” of America’s reputation in “the war on terror.”
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Books
The Rhetoric of Family in U.S. Politics
by Laura Lovett
No Direction Home is a powerful and compelling piece of cultural and political history that fundamentally reframes the history of the modern American family. Whether you lived through the 1970s or not, you will not be able to think about that decade and those that followed the same way again after reading this remarkable book.
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Poetry
Lamenter-in-Chief
by David Wojahn
Let us hope that Pinsky’s new Selected Poems will help to dispel the more jaded views of his accomplishments. For Pinsky is an important figure. He is also, as Tony Hoagland has rightly observed, “a much stranger poet than is generally acknowledged.”
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Books
A Palestinian Peacemaker’s Story
by Ronit Avni
Jundi’s coming-of-age story is chronicled in the illuminating book, The Hour of Sunlight, co-authored by him and his friend, former colleague and author/documentary filmmaker/playwright Jen Marlowe. The title derives from Mahmoud Darwish’s stunning poem, “On This Earth.” Like Darwish’s poetry, Jundi’s life is a tale of dislocation, of yearning, of delight in the details and a reverence for the written word.
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Books
Early Days of the New Student Revolt
by Paul Buhle
Springtime is a very good and very timely volume, even if so much has changed since last fall, when the final pieces were completed, that things look rather different. The outcomes remain in doubt, of course. The crises in education, mirroring the crises in society at large, make Education Under Fire (soon to be an MR Press book) useful in a complementary fashion, setting the structure and some of the backstory in place.
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Books
Counterculture Hasidism
by Lynn Feinerman
Holy Beggars is a page-turner that reads like a memoir and weaves together journalism, history, deep Jewish teaching, rollicking storytelling, and poetic tribute. It paints a cinematic panorama of the 1960s in San Francisco, explores the impact of the era of “tune in, turn on, drop out,” and describes Rabbi Carlebach’s expansive musical career.
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Film
Turning to the Past to Envision a Different Future: Family Accountability in Eliaichi Kimaro’s “A Lot Like You”
by Wendy Elisheva Somerson
When I saw Eliaichi Kimaro’s documentary A Lot Like You premier at the Seattle International Film Festival this year, one of my first responses to this moving and complex film was to recognize it as a model for a personal and family accountability process. The film brings to life the complicated, messy, beautiful, and liberatory process of addressing harm and seeking healing within a family context.
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Books
Treasures from the Trash
by David Danoff
In Sacred Trash, husband-and-wife co-authors Peter Cole and Adina Hoffman, who met while working on the editorial staff at Tikkun in the late 1980s, have produced a fascinating hybrid -- part historical adventure, part bibliographical paper trail and scholarly prospectus, and part poetic meditation.
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Israel/Palestine
Objective Historian or Staunch Ideologue?
by Tony Klug
Professor Benny Morris -- a key member of the group of Israeli scholars known as the “new historians”-- devotes almost the entirety of his latest book to shooting down the case for both one state and two states in all their variations.
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Books
Gritty Wisdom: A Father-Son Journey
by Kim Chernin
Phil Wolfson’s Noe describes the experience of a family facing the serious illness and eventual death of Noah, their sixteen-year-old son. This wasn’t an easy book for a bereaved father to write: “The memory of losing him still ignites the most intense feeling of emptiness and longing. It took me ten years after he died to complete the chapter on the last days of his life.... Even now, writing this is complete torment.”
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