Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. His new book is Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Zipperstein's reply:
James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, published in 1963 and which I reread recently, remains surprisingly fresh. This all the more surprising since so much of it is devoted to Baldwin’s dinner with then-Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad which itself provides a brilliant portrait of the underpinnings of African-American rage. Philip Roth’s The Ghost WriterDiscover more about Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, and learn more about Steven Zipperstein's scholarship at his Stanford webpage.is, on rereading, as crystalline, as gorgeous as the best of Ivan Turgenev. Tova Mirvis offers as clearheaded a portrait as is available in the English language for the joys and constraints of living as an Orthodox Jew in her recent memoir, The Book of Separation. Astonishing in its detail and subtlety is Yuri Slezkine’s latest book The Government House. Haruki Murakami’s new collection of short stories, Men Without Women, is characteristically spare and tender and haunting.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
