A valuable, if often repetitive, perspective on an American Jewish family.
A Jewish immigrant and her nephew reflect on their family’s history in Europe and the United States in this nonfiction anthology.
In this eclectic familial history and memoir, Sherwin Gluck offers another installment of his ongoing series. Two previous published books—Private Good Luck (2019) and Pappus: The Saga of a Jewish Family (2021) —were penned by Sherwin, who serves as the editor of this collection of memoiristic vignettes and miscellaneous writings by his aunt, Maria Gluck. The first section offers Maria’s reflections on growing up in a small village in Czechoslovakia in the early 20th century, written prior to her death in 2013. She intended it for her youngest brother, who didn’t remember much from his early childhood overseas, and it traces more than 100 years of family history. Maria recalls, for instance, the differences between her mother’s and father’s extended families; although both were Jewish and followed kosher practices, her father’s family were prosperous business owners, while her mother’s came from more humble origins and were more conservative religiously. The book provides a unique lens into Jewish life in Europe prior to World War II, and later, it harrowingly tells how Maria and her siblings narrowly escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to Columbus, Ohio, in 1940; almost the entirety of their family who remained in Europe were killed by the Nazi regime. Maria’s memoir is fewer than 200 pages in length, followed by more than 450 pages of miscellaneous musings. This eclectic assortment includes additional commentary on her family tree, early writings of an anticipated second book, and even a fictional story that centers on similar themes as the memoir.
Many of these reflections, however, repeat information, making the narrative feel quite repetitive at times. Sherwin, as editor, presents them in a lightly edited format that lends a feeling of authenticity to a work that aims to preserve Maria’s memories for posterity. He prefaces his aunt’s writings with introductions, and provides a good deal of editorial commentary and notes that provide historical context, clarification, and translations of Hebrew and Yiddish terminology: “I came from a very balabuste family [well cared for, religious, and close-knit family], well known and respected,” reads a representative passage from the first page of her remembrance. Sherwin allows Maria to tell her story in her own words, including accounts of controversial disputes with family members; many readers won’t share all of her views, such as her opposition to gay marriage. He reflects on his personal memories of Maria, as well, who never had children of her own; for example, he presents the eulogy he delivered at her funeral, which includes an anecdote about visiting her apartment in Queens, New York. Originally written using IBM’s ViaVoice software when Maria was in her 90s, the book’s conversational style presents a narrative that’s full of fascinating detail, despite occasional stream-of-consciousness tangents. Sherwin’s editorial commentary throughout effectively accomplishes its task of adding useful context to her ruminations, where necessary.
A valuable, if often repetitive, perspective on an American Jewish family.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780967254340
Page Count: 618
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1174
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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