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People Of The Books

A special book for that special someone on your Chanukah gift list.

Gail Zimmerman
Arts Editor

For the Adventurer
Edward Kritzler's Jewish Pirates of
the Caribbean: How a Generation of
Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an
Empire in the New World in Their Quest
for Religious Freedom — and Revenge
(Doubleday; $26) takes readers into the
lives of a small group of Jewish merchants
and adventurers who pioneered the
Jamaican pirate trade and created an out-
post of religious freedom at the same time.

For the Politico
Florida Rep. Robert Wexler has written
Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned
to Survive (and Thrive] in the Contact
Sport of Congress (Thomas Dunne Books;
$25.95), an on-the-ground view of how
the most volatile political debates in the
last decade played out.

For the Rock 'n' Roll Fan
The memoir Bumping Into Geniuses: My
Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business
(Gotham Books; $26) by Danny Goldberg
— rock journalist, record-company
president and manager to musicians from
Kurt Cobain to Warren Zevon — offers an
insider's look into the history, personali-
ties and business of rock.

For the Environmentalist
In Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need
a Green Revolution — and How It Can
Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux),
Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman
describes the dangers of global warm-
ing, global flattening and global crowding
and details how the U.S. can, and must,
innovate clean power and energy efficient
systems that will help save the planet.

For the Historian
Michael Karpin's Tightrope: Six Centuries
of a Jewish Dynasty (Wiley; $35) traces
the 650-year epic tale of the Backenroth
family, which, beginning at the Middle
Ages, could be found at some of the most
important events of the times.

For the Comics Fan
In Jews and American Comics: An
Illustrated History of an American Art
Form (New Press; $29.95), Paul Buhle
traces the root of the comic strip to 19th-
century Europe, finding parallels with
the history of Yiddish literacy culture.
In From Krakow to Krypton (Jewish
Publication Society; $25), Arie Kaplan
interviews legendary figures such as
Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Neil Gaiman and
Art Spiegelman about their favorite sto-
ries, uncovers their Jewish subtexts and
chronicles the Jewish contribution to the
comic-book industry (with 100 full-color
illustrations).

For the Biblicist
The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving
the Z500 Year Old Mystery of the Fabled
Biblical Ark (HarperOne; $25.95) is
author Tudor Parfitt's real-life account of
his quest to recover the revered artifact
that contained the Ten Commandments
and disappeared from the Temple in
Jerusalem when the Babylonians invaded
in 586 B.C.E. The Wall Street Journal has
called Parfitt, a Jewish studies professor in
England, the "British Indiana Jones!'

For the Miracle Believer
Authors Yitta Halberstam and Judith
Leventhal, who have written six titles in
the Small Miracles series, collected more
than 50 Holocaust and post-Holocaust
experiences that find rays of light in a
nightmarish time in Small Miracles

of the Holocaust: Extraordinary
Coincidences of Faith, Hope, and
Survival (Lyons Press; $19.95).

For the Linguist
One Thousand Languages: Living,
Endangered and Lost (University of
California Press; $29.95), edited by Peter
K. Austin, takes readers on a panoramic
tour of the globe's 6,000 languages,
although linguists estimate that by the
year 2050 as many as half of those will
be extinct. Not so with modern Hebrew.
For the story of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the
man who helped bring Hebrew back to
life at the end of the 19th century, and the
role of language in nation building, take a
look at Resurrecting Hebrew (Nextbook/
Schocken; $21), part of the Jewish
Encounters series devoted to the promo-
tion of Jewish literature, culture and ideas.

For the Biography Lover
Also part of the Jewish Encounters
series is Benjamin Disraeli (Nextbook/
Schocken; $21), Adam Kirsch's revealing
bio of the first — and only — Jewish
prime minister of England, who also was
a best-selling novelist, a proto-Zionist, a
notorious lover and an archconservative
who spearheaded the passing of radically
liberal laws.

For the Law & Order Fan
Standup comic Richard Belzer, who has
played Detective John Munch on NBC's
Law & Order: SVU for 10 seasons, blends
fact with fiction in his first novel, I Am
Not a Cop! (Simon & Schuster; $24), in
which his off-screen persona employs
investigative know-how gleaned from his
role as a TV detective to solve the mys-
tery surrounding the disappearance of a
trusted friend.

For the Literature Buff
Joyce Carol Oates returns to the short
story in Wild Nights! Stories About the
Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain,
James, and Hemingway (HarperCollins;
$24.95), which re-imagines the final days
of five major American writers.

For the Yiddishist
In Yiddishlands (Wayne State University
Press; $27.95), a series of interwoven
stories, David G. Roskies, professor of
Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological
Seminary, looks back on his life and the
life of his mother, tracing the Yiddish
experience through major historical events
and personalities of the last century.

For the Humorist
Esther Cohen's little book Don't Mind
Me ... and Other Jewish Lies (Hyperion;
$16.95), with illustrations by New Yorker
illustrator Roz Chast, acknowledges "per-
haps the most recognizable of Jewish cus-
toms: the perfected art of saying one thing
and meaning other."

For the Sports Fan
Employing a calendar format, Day by Day
in Jewish Sports History (Ktav Publishing;
$39.50 hardcover; $25 paperback) by Bob
Wechsler covers every day of the year with
a roundup of achievements, records and
events of all kinds. Also check out WDFN-
1130 radio personalities Mike Stone and
Art Regner's Great Book of Detroit Sports
Lists (Running Press; $14.95).

For the Short Story Lover
Novelist, playwright, short-story writer
and Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for
Splash) Bruce Jay Friedman offers his first
new collection of short fiction in more

Books on page C12

December 11 • 2008

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