Books by Jonathan Kirsch and Complete Book Reviews
Jonathan Kirsch, Author . Viking $24.95 (317p) ISBN 978-0-670-03009-5
Writing with considerable vivacity, Kirsch (King David; Moses; The Harlot by the Side of the Road) has produced a readily accessible and often entertaining version of Jewish history. Throughout, he succeeds in his somewhat labored objective of...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author . Viking $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-670-03286-0
The story of the suppression of polytheistic religions in the ancient world by the ever more powerful monotheistic religions is well known. Kirsch (The Harlot by the Side of the Road
) offers his own version of this oft-told tale in a lively and...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author . Harper San Francisco $25.95 (338p) ISBN 978-0-06-081698-8
The question of how and when the world will end has captivated thinkers for centuries. Wars, natural disasters, social upheaval and personal suffering often send believers back to the writings of their prophets and seers, whose gift is to bring...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author . HarperOne $26.95 (296p) ISBN 978-0-06-081699-5
Mention the Inquisition to any informed person and you're likely to garner a response somewhere between horror and disgust. Kirsch, a prolific writer and documenter of our past (A History of the End of the World
; Gods Against the Gods
),...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author Ballantine Books $27 (378p) ISBN 978-0-345-40749-8
Arguing that several stories in the Bible have often go untold because of the graphic nature of their sexual content, writer and attorney Kirsch here sets out to retell the stories, ranging from the ""sacred incest of Lot's daughters"" to the rape...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author Ballantine Books $27.5 (415p) ISBN 978-0-345-41269-0
Kirsch's treatment is less a biography of Moses than a meticulous distillation of the considerable secondary literature that has grown up around the sparse biblical material. Kirsch (The Harlot By the Side of the Road) draws extensively on the...
READ FULL REVIEW
Jonathan Kirsch, Author Ballantine Books $28 (384p) ISBN 978-0-345-43275-9
In this biography/commentary hybrid, Kirsch sheds light on biblical characters and gives readers a refresher course on Israel's monarchic period, from 1025 to 925 BCE. Arguing that the Old Testament may have originated as David's royal biography,...
READ FULL REVIEW
The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris
Jonathan Kirsch. Norton/Liveright, $27.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-87140-452-7
In November 1938, a 17-year-old Polish Jew walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated diplomat Ernst vom Rath in reprisal for the deportation of his family and 12,000 other Jews. Grynszpan couldn’t have foreseen the consequences of his
READ FULL REVIEW