The Book Thieves

Ceremonial book burnings and the theft of precious art works are well-known elements of Nazi Germany’s rampage through Europe. In The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance, Swedish journalist Anders Rydell tells the less familiar story of how two Nazi agencies—the intelligence wing of the…

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City of Light, City of Poison

One of the advantages (or disadvantages depending on the day) of hanging out with writers and spending time on the internet fringes of the publishing industry* is that you have advance warning of books before they reach the bookstores. Sometimes the wait is torture. Holly Tucker‘s latest book, City of Light, City of Poison: Murder,…

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What Makes a Mosque, Part Five: America’s Oldest Mosque

If you listen to the news, you’d think that Islamic immigrants to the United States are something new. They’re not. Beginning in the 1880s and ending only when the United States closed the door on non-European immigrants in 1924, Muslims from Ottoman-controlled Syria joined the rush to emigrate to America. Like their European counterparts, most…

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