Five Books: Jews in film, Jews and booze, the poisonous sound of children’s voices in Ben Marcus’ novel, Tony Judt’s last conversations, and more

The newest George Lucas production, Red Tails, forces a Star Wars nerd to come to terms with a troubling philosophy

Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of War Horse saps the imaginative power of the play in favor of sentimentality

The question policy-makers should focus on isn’t whether Iran would use a nuclear weapon, but how a bomb would embolden an already reckless regime

Clancy Sigal’s 1961 novel, Going Away, is a primer for the Occupy generation about the futility of despair and the inevitability of change

In The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel, an aristocratic Jewish family in Italy tries to wall itself off from the Holocaust

Lebanon’s Maronites, threatened by Sunni power, will be the bellwether of the Mideast’s Christians. Could they face the same fate as the region’s Jews?

Michael Kohlhaas, a 19th-century novella by Heinrich von Kleist, reminds the Israeli and U.S. right that lust for vengeance is a terrible idea

Diagnosed with cancer, my father decided to have his tongue removed. It’s an extreme treatment, but he’s always known how to make things work out.

From chocolate cake to onion rolls, recent Jewish cookbooks offer a tantalizing range of recipes for Hanukkah treats to complement the latkes