Jewish History & Culture
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Spies, Celebs, Classics and More — Good Reads are Coming Up
Among the most daunting questions I’m often confronted with is: “What should I read next?†Recently, I traveled to the depths of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York for BookExpo 2009, the annual American Bookseller’s gathering, where I crisscrossed the convention floor, Indiana Jones-like, to gather publishers’ catalogues and advance-reader copies of […]
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Design with a "Z" (Lajos Kozma and Szalon)
Lajos Kozma. Photo courtesy Szalon Can a piece of furniture convey the story of Hungarian Jewry or reveal the genius of a little-known master? The story of a career undercut by anti-Semitism and cut short by death? This weekend’s “Legends of La Cienega Design Walk” (May 7-9) offers a celebration of design through lectures, panel […]
JEWBALL: From First NBA Basket to Major League Umping
Who knew? Who knew that basketball has a storied Jewish past, or that a non-sports guy like me would ever read, no less enjoy, a book about baseball umpires, Bruce Weber’s “As They See ‘Em” (Scribner, 2009)? Maybe it’s because Passover is a time of miracles – or is that Chanukah? Or Purim? Or the […]
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City of Images
Los Angeles has long held a fascination with the visual; beholden to looks, surfaces and images, it is a city where even the buildings seem to strike a pose. So it might seem surprising that until now, there’s never been an institution here devoted to photography. But that all changes this week with the opening […]
Laud the Life of Sid Grauman, Hollywood's Gold Standard
Ever wonder how the movie industry went from five-cent nickelodeons in New York to the glamour of Hollywood with red carpet premieres and the highest of artistic aspirations? Or why a certain pagoda-like Hollywood movie theater in whose courtyard rest footprints of actors is one of the most beloved and frequented tourist sites on the […]
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Zap! Pow! Bam!
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s two Jewish kids from Cleveland! The fact that Superman, the defender of truth, justice and the American way, as created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was not so much from Krypton as, in the words of cartoon artist Jules Feiffer, “from Planet […]