d'Ettaquette's Book Morsels

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The Boy From The North Country by Sam Sussman

The Boy From The North Country penned by Bob Dylan’s doppelganger, author Sam Sussman is a deeply moving songbook to love. The narrative evokes myriad emotions---compassion, empathy, bliss, sorrow, hope --- exquisitely expressed in Sussman’s debut novel. If you’ve ever experienced…

The Adventures of Max Spitzkopf

The brief life of author Jonas Kreppel (his surname means dumpling in Yiddish) is almost as compelling as his 15 “thrilling odes“ titled, Adventures of Max Spitzkopf, the Yiddish Sherlock Holmes. Born in 1874, Galicia, Kreppel’s family was Hasidic. Torah study, however, was not…

Bob Dylan Jewish Roots American Soil by Harry Freedman

Iconic American singer, Bob Dylan, won the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature. Prominent, literary voices expressed outrage at the choice of an “adenoidal singer” chosen to receive the most prestigious prize for his written work. Naysayers claimed, “the ideals of literature had been…

The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer

Culture vultures beware! The original Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait in the Louvre, the four hundred year-old work of legendary artist, Leonardo da Vinci, may be, “a cold and lonely lovely work of art” as Nat King Cole crooned years ago, but also a cold and lonely, lovely fake. In…

Shalama by Jean Hoffmann Lewanda

There are no Jews living in Harbin, a barren area “north of North Korea”. There are, however, many Jewish heritage sites that confirm Jews once flourished in Harbin, a bitterly cold place in Northern China with temperatures dipping below 35º Centigrade. One of these Jews was Abram…