Joseph Epstein, my teacher

Joseph Epstein’s latest book, Essays in Biography , is being praised hither and yon , although the review over at the Millions , referring...

Bonfire of the ethnicities

Tom Wolfe, Back to Blood (Boston: Little, Brown, 2012). 704 pages. Tom Wolfe has now written four novels—four very big novels—since declari...

“Doctors don’t do hope”

“Doctors don’t do hope anymore,” my wife, herself a doctor, said to me the other day as I was leaving my oncologist’s office. I was complain...

Hitler was an optimist

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (New York: Riverhead, 2012). 304 pages. $26.95. Is it possible to be a Jew through literature? Every othe...

Fairy tales from my father

On Thanksgiving morning, my 82-year-old father and I sat together to watch NFL football. Men love sports because we can lose ourselves in th...

Open letter to Philip Roth

On what he has meant to his readers, especially his Jewish readers: the daily feature this morning at Jewish Ideas Daily .

A literary prize for Erdrich—at last

Louise Erdrich has won the National Book Award in fiction for The Round House , her thirteenth novel. (My Commentary review of it is here ...