Blog

We have just marked the 244th anniversary of independence for the United States. At this time soul searching might be in order.

The following books are available at the Jacobs Library or most public libraries.

NONFICTION

Brian                        The elected and the chosen: why American presidents have supported Jews and Israel: from George Washington to Barack Obama

Brodkin                  How Jews became white folks and what that says about race in America

Gad                          The Color of Love: the story of a mixed-race girl. Gad was adopted into a loving Jewish family but not everyone embraced her.

Goldman               The American Jewish story through cinema

Hertzberg            The Jews in America: four centuries of an uneasy encounter: a history

McBride                The Color of Water: a Black man’s tribute to his white mother. McBride searches to find the story of his mother’s estrangement from her Jewish family.

Nadell                     America's Jewish women: a history from colonial times to today

Okrent                    The Guarded Gate: bigotry, eugenics, and the law that kept two generations of Jews, Italians, and other European immigrants out of America

Oren                        Joining the club: a history of Jews and Yale

Sarna                       Lincoln and the Jews

Sarna                       When General Grant Expelled the Jews

Schwartz               Ghettos: the history of a word

Stavans                   How Yiddish changed America and how America changed Yiddish

Weisman                The chosen wars: how Judaism became an American religion

FICTION

Brown                      Lake on Fire transports the reader to Gilded Age of Chicago and to recreate the Jewish immigrant experience

Carlton                    In the Neighborhood of True captures the racism, anti-Semitism, and social interactions of mid-century Atlanta

Diamant                  The Boston Girl is a vivid novel portrait  Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Foer                           Here I Am is the struggle of on with his multiple roles as a husband, father, Jew, and American.

Schlitz                      The Hired Girl is Joan, a poor girl, who finds herself a servant in a wealthy Jewish household in Baltimore.

Singer                       In the Shadow of Alabama Rachel finds the key to her  father’s anger in World War II Alabama.

Solomon              The Little Bride, a Russian immigrant, is traded on the mid-west plains  as a homesteader.