Review

Pope Francis at the Day of Judgment

A new film by Wim Wenders captures the moral splendor of Pope Francis while ignoring the politics.

Andrew Lapin July 6, 2018

Review

‘Fauda’ and the Act of Israeli Ventriloquism

The new season of the hit Israeli show Fauda continues in its portrayal of brutish Israelis and cowardly Palestinians.

Mitchell Abidor June 27, 2018

Review

Not Another Holocaust Book

Sheila Heti’s Motherhood addresses a family’s post-Holocaust grief—without addressing the Shoah outright.

Helen Betya Rubinstein June 26, 2018

Review

What Went Wrong With Identity Politics?

In a new book, Asad Haider makes the case for coalition-building and a return to universalist radical movements.

Kaila Philo June 13, 2018

Review

War in the Language of Hope

Writing in Esperanto, Spomenka Štimec offers a harrowing account of war in luscious detail.

Shoshana Olidort June 11, 2018

Review

The American Jewish Army that Never Was

A new work chronicles the attempts by Zionist leaders to raise an American Jewish army to fight Hitler.

Dusty Sklar June 4, 2018

Review

There Will Be Blood: Chaim Soutine at the Jewish Museum

“His paintings reflect the route from Louvre to butcher shop to studio, a private map of an emigre who belonged to no national movement and who created his own style.”

Dan Grossman May 29, 2018

Review

Indonesia’s Unmourned Communists

A new work addresses the long-neglected mass politicide of communists in Indonesia.

Mitchell Abidor May 23, 2018

Review

Our Hilarious Overlords

What’s so funny about backstabbing, brutality and mass murder? Quite a lot.

Logan Bayroff May 23, 2018

Review

A Nation Like All Others: Gershom Scholem and the Paradox of Zionism

How one people’s “independence” became another’s catastrophe.

Samuel Earle May 9, 2018

Review

Revolutionary Love, Revolutionary Heartbreak

Houria Bouteldja’s Whites, Jews, and Us is a useful re-contextualization of antisemitism, but fails as an act of revolutionary love.

Naomi Dann April 26, 2018

Review

The Kremlin Ball

Ex-fascist diplomat Curzio Malaparte’s masterpiece blends the real, the improbable, and the impossible in Soviet Russia.

Mitchell Abidor April 24, 2018

Review

Revolutionary Bandits

A new history of the revolutionary criminals who rejected any possibility of revolution coming from the degraded masses—and turned their revolt into an individualistic one.

Mitchell Abidor April 17, 2018