Rec­om­mend­ed Reading

JBC Book­shelf: Fall Reads — Nonfiction

Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter
September 20, 2012

Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

I think this might be a record: two JBC Book­shelf posts with­in two weeks. Not all of these books will be pub­lished in the fall (it’s ok August, we’re let­ting you slip in), but they’re all worth check­ing out over the next sev­er­al months. The titles below reflect on var­i­ous top­ics across Jew­ish life, cul­ture, and his­to­ry and cel­e­brate Judaism in Amer­i­ca, past, present, and what’s to come…

Liv­ing Jew­ish­ly: A Snap­shot of a Gen­er­a­tion, Ste­fanie Per­vos Bergman, ed. (August 2012, Aca­d­e­m­ic Stud­ies Press)
This anthol­o­gy, pub­lished in part­ner­ship with Jew­ish Unit­ed Fund/​Jewish Fed­er­a­tion of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Chica­go, fea­tures a few past Vis­it­ing Scribes: Matthue Roth, Abby Sher, Stacey Bal­lis. These writ­ers, plus many more thought­ful voic­es, engage in such ques­tions as: ​“Are we mov­ing beyond denom­i­na­tion­al bor­ders?”, ​“Does being a Jew­ish young pro­fes­sion­al today mean nev­er mea­sur­ing up?”, ​“Live, love, learn…but in what order?”

In His­to­ry’s Grip: Philip Roth’s Newark Tril­o­gy, Michael Kim­mage (August 2012, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press)
In His­to­ry’s Grip con­cen­trates on the lit­er­a­ture of Philip Roth, and in par­tic­u­lar on Amer­i­can Pas­toral, I Mar­ried a Com­mu­nist, and The Human Stain. Read JBC reviews of Roth titles here.

Jews in Amer­i­ca, Stephen D. Corrsin, Aman­da Siegel, and Ken­neth Ben­son (Novem­ber 2012, D Giles Lim­it­ed in asso­ci­at­ed with the New York Pub­lic Library)
This gor­geous new book is based on the exten­sive col­lec­tion of the NYPL and fea­tures an intro­duc­tion from Jonathan D. Sar­na, as well as 110 col­or and 10 b&w images of rare books, pam­phlets, man­u­scripts, maps, and more. 

Singer’s Type­writer and Mine: Reflec­tions on Jew­ish Cul­ture, Ilan Sta­vans (Novem­ber 2012, Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Press)
What’s not to love about this one? Sta­vans inter­weaves his own expe­ri­ence with oth­er Jew­ish writ­ers and thinkers, with spe­cif­ic essays focus­ing on: Isaac Bashe­vis Singer, trans­la­tion and God’s lan­guage, sto­ry­telling as midrash, Yid­dish and Sephar­idc lit­er­a­tures, the con­nec­tion between humor and ter­ror, the cre­ators of the King James Bible, plus more.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor and now CEO, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.

More from Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter
book pre­view