Today Nextbook.org published an essay I wrote about the neglected African-American novelist John Oliver Killens, in whose blistering novel, And Then We Heard the Thunder (1963), a Jew teams up with some disaffected African-American soldiers to wage bloody war on the racist U.S. military at the end of WWII. It’s a bizarre and almost entirely forgotten moment in the strange and often tragic history of black-Jewish relations in American literature. Please take a look over at Nextbook.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
By Michael Chabon
HarperCollins. 432 pages. $26.95.

There’s no better way to describe Michael Chabon – who’s most famous for his monumental, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2000 novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – than as a literary superhero. He may not have X-ray vision or the ability to bend iron bars with his hands, but his gifts as a wordsmith are no less extraordinary or exuberant. In a new book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Chabon flexes his hypertrophied storytelling muscles once again, and puts on a dazzling show. (more…)

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
By Will Eisner
142 pages. W. W. Norton. $23.95.

What’s so comic, exactly, about comic books? As far back as the Golden Age, when the form flourished in the hands of mostly Jewish American young men, relatively few of the word-and-picture narratives to which we ascribe this label have been primarily concerned with humor. The dominant modes have been action, mystery, horror and romance. Still, silly as it sounds, even when they aren’t the least bit funny they’re known as comics. (more…)

The Hebrew Hammer isn’t the only Jew in a frock coat and a black hat meting out justice this winter. In fact, next to the Weiss brothers, lieutenants in San Francisco’s turn-of-the-century Jewish mob, the Hammer looks like a bit of a nebbish.

The brothers are the heroes of “Market Street,” the first story arc in “Caper,” a new monthly series published by DC Comics. “Market Street” will wrap up in the February and March issues of “Caper” and will be followed by two more four-issue arcs, written by Judd Winick and drawn by different artists. Varied in tone and setting, the tales are loosely linked through family connections between characters, and revolve around double-crosses, heists and various criminal misadventures. (more…)