There are publishers and there is Nextbook.

And to read “Ben-Gurion A Political Life” by Shimon Peres in Conversation with David Landau” ($25.95, 224 pages) and Deborah E. Lipstadt’s “The Eichmann Trial”  ($24.95, 231 pages) is to be grateful that there is a publisher like Nextbook that gives life to these two very important books. 

The Ben-Gurion book has much that is well known but also a great deal that is not. In the highly capable hands of the man who has been president of the state of Israel since 2007 and who was a protégé of Ben-Gurion, a personage called Israel’s Washington and Jefferson, we are there through the struggles and triumphs, the momentous moments and the times of great despair. We are there from the early days in Poland to the early days of creating the State of Israel, to the remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish state and the lion that was Ben-Gurion.

Highly readable, a page turner, “Ben-Gurion A Political Life” brings back a complex and great leader and his time and place. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED,

This year is the 50th anniversary of “The Eichmann Trial” and Professor Lipstadt writing eloquently and presenting new research on that moment in time covers all the bases. We are there for the capture of Eichmann in Argentina, for the trial in Israel (influenced from behind the scenes by Ben-Gurion), for the testimony of survivors who found new lives after the Holocaust, to the verdict and the execution of one of the most heinous human beings to ever exist on this earth.  Lipstadt spares no effort in putting forward the story.

Moving, meticulously assembled, “The Eichmann Trial” is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

“The Life of David” by Robert Pinsky (Nextbook . Schocken, $12.95, 217 pages) is a deep and important tome. It presents a portrait of its subject blending the life and the art of David.

"Naked Hollywood: Weegee In Los Angeles"  by Richard Meyer (Skira/Rizzoli, 144 pages. $45.00) takes one back to LA in the 1940s and 1950s. More than 200 images leap out at the reader, all taken by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee. Previously a New York City tabloid photographer, Fellig said: "Now I could really photograph the subjects I liked, I was free."   There is much to like about this kind of garish, grotesque but absorbing opus - a world far different than the world today, one shot at times through trick lenses and using multiple exposures. If nostalgia is your thing, if a talented photographer unleashed is your bag, this is your book.

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