Post­ed by Nao­mi Fire­stone-Teeter

Each of these upcom­ing books nod toward the past in one way or anoth­er, be it the repub­li­ca­tion of the first Jew­ish cook­book in Amer­i­ca (orig­i­nal pub year: 1871) and a 1962 clas­sic of Ger­man short fic­tion, a look back at the life of Leonard Cohen, or an explo­ration of the true sto­ry behind a young man’s death. While these titles leave much to look for­ward to, here are a few more titles to be on the look­out out for: Michael Chabon’s Tele­graph Avenue, Jami Atten­berg’s The Mid­dlesteins, Shani Boi­ja­ni­u’s The Peo­ple of For­ev­er Are Not Afraid, Marc Tra­cy and Franklin Foer’s Jew­ish Jocks, and Amos Oz’s Jews and Words.

Speak­ing of fall delights.…JBC’s Annu­al Raid the Shelves event will be on Octo­ber 10th at JBC HQ. Find more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing a link for reg­is­tra­tion, here

Final­ly, Jew­ish chil­dren’s book authors and illus­tra­tors should click here to find out more infor­ma­tion about the Novem­ber con­fer­ence in NYC.


I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, Sylvie Sim­mons (Sep­tem­ber 2012, Ecco) 
A biog­ra­phy of one of the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial song­writ­ers of the past fifty years.

Jew­ish Cook­ery Book: On Prin­ci­ples of Econ­o­myEsther Levy (Octo­ber 2012, Andrews McMeel Pub­lish­ing)
This was the first Jew­ish cook­book pub­lish­ing in Amer­i­ca (1871) and it was writ­ten to help Euro­pean immi­grants adapt to life in the New World while main­tain­ing their reli­gious heritage.

El Ilu­mi­na­do: A Graph­ic Nov­el, Ilan Sta­vans and Steve Sheinkin (Novem­ber 2012, Basic Books)

When young Rolan­do Pérez falls off the cliffs out­side San­ta Fe, New Mex­i­co, the mys­ter­ies begin imme­di­ate­ly. Was he pushed or did he jump? What are the doc­u­ments he’s will­ing to give his life to pro­tect from his fam­i­ly, the police, and the Catholic Church? Ilan Sta­vans tries to seek the truth about Rolan­do and the secret doc­u­ments that reveal the mys­te­ri­ous sect of cryp­to-Jews (whose lin­eage is traced back to the Inqui­si­tion, and who still live today, par­tial­ly con­cealed, in the Amer­i­can Southwest).

The Jew Car, Franz Füh­mann; Isabel Far­go Cole, trans. (Decem­ber 2012, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press)
Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1962, The Jew Car is an exam­i­na­tion of the psy­chol­o­gy of Nation­al Social­ism, begin­ning with child­hood anti-Semi­tism and mov­ing to a yout­ful embrace — and then an ulti­mate rejec­tion — of Nazi ideology.


Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.