Author: Joshua Cohen

Joshua Cohen had me hooked on the first page. In fact, I was so impressed that I felt compelled to read the paragraph aloud to my son. It went something like this… “When mathematicians die, they become statistics. If you studied chemistry you can say that when you die, your body decomposes into chemicals.  You can make a similar argument for biology. However, history is the only field in the humanities, where you become history when you die!”

After that profound beginning, the book devolves into the sad life of Ruben Blum, a historian at the Corbin University in Upstate New York. In the late 1950s, he is the lone Jewish professor in a sea of Gentiles and his life gets turned upside down when he is placed on the hiring committee for the history department. It turns out they are interviewing a special candidate, Ben Zion Netanyahu, who happens to be the father of the very famous Bibi Netanyahu who has been the Prime Minister of Israel for close to two decades. But back then he was just a quaint Jewish professor visiting this sleepy christian town during a Christmas season. The novel describes the cultural clash between the strongly Jewish Netanyahu family and the Blum family who just happened to be Jewish and were happy to assimilate into the American way of life. 

It’s a pretty wild ride and I truly enjoyed the book. Joshua Cohen is also a very erudite author and I got to learn some new words like “proboscine”, “chthonic” and “hyemal”.  Also, this book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 and its less than 250 pages. What are you waiting for?