RaveMarginaliaGeorge Prochnik has done a splendid job of capturing the many contradictions and complexities in Heine’s biography and oeuvre. As with his earlier, well-received biographies of Stefan Zweig and Gershom Scholem (two later German Jewish literati), Prochnik possesses an uncanny knack for inhabiting the mind of his subject. This is not biography at an ivory-tower remove, but rather an attempt to discover, using his subject’s own writing, what made him tick. Because Prochnik does not provide footnotes (preferring, instead, a copious bibliographical essay), it is not always entirely clear where he is ventriloquizing Heine and where he is speaking in his own voice. Either way, the result is a high-octane account of Heine’s life in what seems convincingly the way he himself experienced it.
Steven R. Weisman
PositiveLos Angeles Review of Books\"Steven Weisman’s The Chosen Wars offers a nuanced analysis of how this American Judaism arose and how it came to define Jews in the United States ... The story that Weisman tells is familiar to scholars of American Jewish history, and he is generous in acknowledging the spadework done by these historians. His is a work of synthesis and popular history in the best sense of the word. And he tells his story with verve and insight. What sets off his book is a striking argument about the way American Judaism came into existence and what it tells us about the character of American Jews.\
