- , , humorously observed essays from the frontlines of the struggle that is grow- ing up. FOR THE BIRD LOVER In The Birds of Pandemonium (Algonquin), Michele Raffin, a former Silicon Valley executive, writes about founding Pandemonium Aviaries, one of the largest bird sanctuaries and rare breeding facilities in the country, with more than 350 birds representing 40 species. Sixteen pages of full-color photos show off these magnificent birds. FOR THE ENVIRONMENTALIST In The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us (WW. Norton), Diane Ackerman looks at the impact humans have had on Earth and also the things we can do to slow our "inevitable extinction." Always a poetic voice, she discusses, among other top- ics, overpopulation, the energy crisis and our dependence on technology. The Hilltop (Scribner) by Assaf Gavron is an Israeli bestseller and win- ner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, an Israeli literary award for writers age 50 and under. Now released in the U.S., it is the first Israeli novel to grapple with the charged issue of settlements in the West Bank, where two very different broth- ers attempt to rebuild their lives and their relationship. Weaving between a fledgling settlement and the landscapes of Tel Aviv, New York City and Miami, the story jumps back and forth between present day and the brothers' pasts. Juliana Maio's first novel, City of the Sun (Greenleaf), is a romantic histori- cal thriller, set during the early years of World War II. Her well-drawn char- acters include an American reporter, a Jewish refugee, an important German refugee physicist and a German spy, along with real-life figures including King Farouk and William Donovan, the U.S. lawyer named to form the Office of the Coordinator of Information (the predecessor of the OSS and CIA). Her depiction of Cairo is full of color and longing. The Warburg in James Carroll's his- tory-in-the-form-of-a-novel, Warburg in Rome (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is David Warburg, an American attorney assigned to the lives-saving War Refugee Board in the Italian capital near the end of World War II. His job is to aid civil- ian victims of the Nazis and their fellow Axis powers. Carroll's sweeping tale features love and betrayal, chastity and sexuality, and the Holocaust's aftermath, all in the interplay of the military, politi- cal and ecclesiastical powers that crossed FOR THE VOLUNTEER The year she turned 50, Caryl M. Stern took on the task of heading up the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, where she became responsible for the goal of reducing the number of children under age 5 who die from preventable causes from 19,000 each day to zero. In I Believe in Zero: Learning from the World's Children (St. Martin's Press), she writes as a mother who left her own family to travel to the poorest countries in the world — witnessing the conditions that mothers and chil- dren survive in, bringing a personal and emotional perspective to their stories and inviting readers to see the world's children as our own. FOR THE ROAD TRIPPER The newest entry in the Images of America series, Grand River Avenue: From Detroit to Lake Michigan (Arcadia Publishing) by Jon Milan and Gail Offen, explores US-16's ever- changing status — from walking path Chanukah Books on page 71 paths in the Eternal City. The Wall (Random House) — an epic of survival and redemption and the final installment of H.G. Adler's Shoah trilogy (following Panorama and The Journey), translated from German by Peter Filkins — draws on Adler's own experiences in the Holocaust and his postwar life. It tells the story of Arthur Landau, survivor of a wartime atrocity, a man struggling with his nightmares and memories of his past as he struggles to build a new life. Adler (1910-1988) has had his work compared to Joyce, Kafka and Gertrude Stein. Brian Morton's Florence Gordon (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is the story of a feisty feminist icon, now 75, still teaching and writing and alive with ideas, still center stage at any gathering she joins. She is long divorced and living on New York's Upper West Side in the summer of 2009, when her son, his wife and daughter return to New York City from their home in Seattle. While there's no discussion of her Judaism or religious life, Florence is unmistakably Jewish, as is her intellectual milieu. Morton unfolds his tale in brief chapters, some no more than a page, seeing life from the different characters' points of view. 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