Prominent authors Attending Jewish Book Fair is November 2-12

Prominent authors – from our community and all over the world – in literature, the arts, philosophy, theology, history and current events are invited to engage, educate and entertain.

Annual Jewish Book Fair is November 2-12

The Annual Jewish Book Fair is a community-wide cultural and literary event, attracting a large and varied audience of more than 20,000 people of all ages. What you will notice is the over 40 authors bring a diversity of topics from history, to cooking, from fiction to non-fiction, music and comedy to the book fair.

The 66th annual book fair will run November 2-12. It is the oldest and largest Jewish book fair in the nation. Prominent and emerging writers – from our community and all over the world – in literature, the arts, philosophy, theology, history and current events are invited to engage, educate and entertain. All events are at the Jewish Community Center and the Berman Center for the Performing Arts, 6600 W. Maple Road in West Bloomfield. Most events are free for those that need tickets contact the box office at 248-661-1900 or jccdet.org/bookfair.

Events include:

Jeff Rossen: Rossen to the Rescue

Saturday, Nov. 4 - 7:30 p.m.

You feel the earth move under your feet. It’s an earthquake, and you have seconds to decide what to do. “Yeah, looks like you’re gonna need a total overhaul on that baby! We’re talkin’ at least $6,000.” And you thought you were just coming in for an oil change. Who can possibly help? Every morning, millions of Americans watch Jeff Rossen on “Today,” where he explains how to solve the world’s most harrowing problems. In his new book, Rossen discusses many of his greatest tips and provides game plans for handling almost everything life can throw your way, from how to survive an earthquake to dealing with car mechanics.

Detroit Writes (Local Authors)

Sunday, Nov. 5 - 10 a.m.

Mark M. Bello, Lawrence I. Berkove, Diane Bernstein, Leonard Borman, Edith Covensky, A.J. Reilly and Jon Dwoskin, Renee Jaspan and Ellen Gendelman and Gary Gerson, Steve L. Cohn and Eric Sander Kingston, Donald Levin, Susan Knoppow and Kim Lifton, Janet Meir, Kenneth Garner and Andrei S. Markovits, Shana and Rick Morrison, Donna Oram, Monica Starkman and Michael S. Walker.

Opening the Doors Program presents Anita Naftaly Family Circle Conference

Sunday, Nov. 5

Author and psychologist Michele Borba, Ed. D., is an expert in developing empathy and character in kids. She has appeared on “Today,” Good Morning America,” CNN, “Dateline” and “Anderson Cooper,” among many others. She is also the author of the new UnSelfie: Teaching Children EMPATHY in Their All-About-Me World. Parents, teachers and mental health professionals are invited to learn specific and practical strategies that can immediately be put to use.

Health, Religion and Spirituality- Rabbi Joseph H. Krakoff, with illustrations by Dr. Michelle Y. Sider: Never Long Enough: Finding Comfort and Hope Amidst Grief and Loss

1:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5

For a time when there are seemingly no words, Rabbi Joseph Krakoff, senior director at the Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network, created a guide offering ways to speak about death and those who have passed, and how to offer comfort to those who remain.

Amy Silverstein My Glory Was I Had Such Friends

11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 10

Amy Silverstein had just learned that her heart was about to fail. For any chance of survival, she would need to immediately go to California and begin preparations for surgery. That is where Joy, Jill, Leja, Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann and Jane stepped in. These nine friends stopped everything and went with Amy, where they did whatever was needed, from sleeping beside her bed to massaging her back to filling her room with decorations to keep up her spirits. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends is the story of a group of extraordinary women (many of whom had never even met) who stepped forward to help a friend in the most difficult of times.

Cathryn Jakobson Ramin: Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery

1 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10

Back pain affects the quality of life of millions of people around the world.

There are physicians, chiropractors, medicines, therapies, surgeries, exercises and injections that provide help – or do they really? Cathryn Jakobson Ramin spent many years and a great deal of money in an effort to deal with her back pain. She became an expert on what works, what doesn't, what may cause harm and how to start on the road to recovery.

This invaluable guide will challenge everything you know about back pain and its cures, while showing who and what to avoid, and how to save time, money and suffering.

Non-Fiction

Sunday, Nov. 5 -7 p.m.

Joel Stone: Detroit 1967 It was called everything from a “riot” to an “uprising.”

In 1967, Detroit was rocked by one of the worst racially charged events in modern history. Thousands took to the streets. Stores were looted. Homes were set afire. The air was heavy with the sounds of gunfire. On the 50th anniversary of this extraordinary time, Detroiters look back and consider what it meant and how it shaped the city.

1 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6

Barbara Cohn: The Detroit Public Library

Now stand in the middle of the room and forget, just for a moment, about the books.

What do you see?

Elegance, craftsmanship, history.

The Detroit Public Library is filled with breathtaking architecture, carvings and mosaics, with contributions from some of the world’s most accomplished artists. Here is a story that will fascinate history buffs, art enthusiasts, library lovers and anyone with a connection to Detroit.

Michael G. Smith: Designing Detroit

Wirt Rowland was chief designer for Albert Kahn and was a man whose reach was broad – from Detroit to New York to Miami – and whose ideas were completely new, incorporating, for example, the concept of color in structure. Rowland’s work includes some of Detroit’s most iconic buildings, including Hill Auditorium and the Detroit News building.

So why is so little known of Rowland today?

2:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6

Linda Schuster: Dirty Wars and Polished Silver: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix

Detroit native Lynda Schuster, former writer for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, tells her of extraordinary life in this “riveting international thriller...A page-turner thanks to lucid writing and thrilling storytelling. Schuster set out for adventure the moment she graduated from high school. It didn’t take long to find it. She became a foreign correspondent in Central and South America, Mexico, the Middle East and Africa. She married an ambassador, worked on a kibbutz and dodged rocket fire in Lebanon. Revealing, astonishing, charming – Dirty Wars and Polished Silver takes readers into a remarkable world of politics, intrigue and one woman’s self-discovery.

11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7

Daphne Merkin: This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression

Hospitalization, therapists, one treatment after another: What does it really mean to struggle with despair, an emotion that Daphne Merkin describes as bringing “a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver”? Merkin has suffered with clinical depression since childhood. With no cure, she instead seeks for a place of “relative all-right-ness.”

2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7

Peter Gethers: My Mother’s Kitchen

Judy Gethers loved cooking, worked with Chef Wolfgang Puck and was friends with Julia Child.

Her son Peter knew nothing about the kitchen. Yet when Judy became ill with cancer and suffered two strokes, Peter decided it was time to recreate her favorite foods and prepare the meal of her dreams.

So Gethers learns, and he cooks, and he sits with his mother in this thoughtful and memorable memoir about what it means to be family.

2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8

Alexandra Zapruder: Twenty-six Seconds

Abraham Zapruder was on his way to watch the presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza when his assistant suggested, at the last minute, that he take his new film camera. Such are the modest beginnings of what became the most famous 26-second film in the world. Abraham’s granddaughter, Alexandra, reveals the complete story of her grandfather’s film: its inauspicious beginnings (initially no one was even interested), what it meant for the Zapruder family and how one man's unexpected moment of fame changed the way in which history is understood.

7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9

April Peveteaux: Bake Sales Are My B*tch: Win the Food Allergy Wars with 50+ Recipes to Keep Kids Safe and Parents Sane

It’s the kind of challenge that would terrify even the most skilled chef on “Chopped.”

Prepare a meal with no nuts, no gluten, no whole wheat, nothing dairy and no soy. Also, it needs to be kosher and vegan. With more than 50 recipes that can meet all those regulations, Peveteaux’s “Bake Sales Are My B*tch” can help anyone fix delicious school lunches, food for parties and even sleepovers!

1:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12

Leslie Bennetts: Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers

“I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house. She told me to get the hell off her property.”

Joan Rivers was irreverent, daring, smart and most of all extremely funny. She was also incredibly honest, whether it meant making fun of her plastic surgery or addressing her challenges, from her husband’s suicide to her estrangement from her daughter. A revealing look at a complicated woman driven by ambition and insecurity.

Noon on Sunday, Nov. 12

Barry Holtz: Rabbi Akiva

Rabbi Akiva knew virtually nothing about religion until he was middle aged. And yet he became one of the most important figures in Jewish life. This new biography tells the story of a man who grew up poor, was outspoken and determined, a mystic and theologian – and one of the most fascinating men in the history of Judaism.

3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12

Berl Falbaum: Justice Failed

Alton Logan was an innocent man. Two attorneys knew it – and did nothing about it. In 1983, Alton Logan was falsely convicted of murdering an off-duty corrections officer outside Chicago. He spent 25 years in prison for the crime. The real killer was Andrew Wilson, who admitted the truth to his lawyers. But bound by client-attorney privilege, the men were obligated to remain silent until Wilson’s death. Written in collaboration with Detroit journalist Berl Falbaum, Justice Failed is Alton Logan’s story from childhood to prison to freedom.

Fiction

5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5

Alex Berenson: The Prisoner

Impossible.

Or - could it be?

A CIA agent is said to be passing vital information to ISIS.

There’s only one man for the job: John Wells, of course. But Wells left this kind of work a long time ago.

Or so he thought.

Now, the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda must assume his former identity as a jihadi and what he discovers is unbelievable. A blockbuster thriller from New York Times best-selling author Alex Berenson.

11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 6

Sana Krasikov: The Patriots

Florence Fein left New York during the Great Depression to take a job in Russia. Years later, her son Julian is heading in the same direction, but for a very different reason. Julian lives in the U.S. now but is sent to Moscow for work. While in Russia, he learns that his mother’s KGB file has been opened – and is about to reveal astonishing secrets.

10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8

Janet Benton: Lilli de Jong

A young woman arrives at the doorstep of a Philadelphia home for unwed mothers.

It’s 1883, and Lilli de Jong has no money, the father of her baby has abandoned her, and she has no source of income. She is set to put her child up for adoption, but when the little girl is born everything changes. Lilli tells her story in a diary, the story of a journey that starts at a charity and moves to the streets of a new American city. "So little is permissible for a woman," Lilli writes, “yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood.”

11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 12

Laurie Frankel: This Is How it Always Is

Maybe you have a child like Claude, or know someone like him. There are plenty of Claudes in the world. Claude is 5 years old, and when he grows up he wants to be a girl. Claude’s parents are supportive, but what about the rest of the world? This Is How it Always Is is the story of family, community and the ways in which love shapes and transforms.

6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6

Rachel Kadish: The Weight of Ink

Ester Velasquez is a scribe for a blind rabbi.

Helen Watt is an ailing historian.

But who is the mysterious “Aleph”?

The lives of a fascinating group of characters intertwine through the past and the present when Helen is invited to view a cache of newly discovered 17-century documents. Electrifying and ambitious, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women and the choices and sacrifices they must make to reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

Noon on Wednesday, November 8

Jean Hanff Korelitz: The Devil and Webster

Naomi Roth is about to face the challenge of her life. The first female president of Webster College, Roth is smart and confident. She’s also a former activist, so when a popular professor is denied tenure and students (including her own daughter) begin to protest, Naomi is sympathetic. And then a single, charismatic student emerges as the protestors’ leader: a Palestinian named Omar Khyal.

Tova Mirvis: The Book of Separation

Raised in an Orthodox home and married at 24, Tova Mirvis was about to turn 40 when her life took a dramatic turn. Doubts about her Jewish life, always quietly in the background, suddenly came to the forefront. Mirvis decided to leave her husband, her community and her religion.

7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8

Francine Klagsbrun: Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel

She was dedicated, she was shrewd, she was bold and surprising, and she was never without a cigarette. Golda Meir settled in pre-state Israel in 1921. She became a fundraiser and then a politician, serving as Israel’s first representative to the former Soviet Union and minister of labor and foreign affairs before she was elected prime minister. This is the definitive biography of a woman who negotiated with the likes of Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat and King Hussein. Only once was she taken off guard – a misstep that would force her resignation and forever change her role in Israeli life.

Thursday, Nov. 9- 11 a.m.

Bruce Henderson: Sons and Soldiers

Who could have imagined that one of the Allies’ greatest weapons in the battle against the Nazis would be a group of refugees? The Ritchie Boys were Jews who had fled Germany and came to the United States in the 1930s. With their knowledge of everything German, they were able to sneak back into the country and gather critical information throughout the war. In fact, a postwar Army report found that more than 60% of all credible intelligence coming from Europe was unearthed by the Ritchie Boys. In addition to Bruce Henderson, Professor Guy Stern, a former Ritchie Boy, will speak about his experiences with the group.

1 p.m.

Patricia Posner: The Pharmacist of Auschwitz

It should have come as no surprise when Victor Capesius chose a career in the field known for its motto “First, do no harm.” Medicine was, after all, a family tradition; one parent was a physician, another was a pharmacist. But it was where he chose to “practice” his trade that you must know: Victor Capesius was the chief pharmacist of Auschwitz. So how is it that this pudgy-faced young man born in Romania became the kind of person who joined the SS, worked at Auschwitz and made himself wealthy by pulling gold from the mouths of Jews and then – incredibly enough – vanished?

3 p.m.

Yvette Manessis Corporon: Something Beautiful Happened

Yvette Manessis Corporon always loved her grandmother’s stories about the Jewish family, named Savvas, hidden on a Greek island, Erikousa, during WWII. Miraculously, the father and daughters managed to survive the Nazis thanks to the citizens of Erikousa. Many years later Corporon went in search of the Savvas family and found them in Israel. The meeting renewed her faith in mankind – until days later when a neo-Nazi murdered a member of her family. As Corporon struggled with the loss, she returned to lessons she learned from survivors of the Holocaust.

5 p.m.

Film: “Casablanca,” the classic love story set in WWII, starring Ingrid Berman and Humphrey Bogart

7 p.m.

Noah Isenberg: We’ll Always Have Casablanca

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, “Casablanca” is one of the most beloved films of all times, a movie that sparked dozens of iconic lines (“Here’s looking at you, kid”) and is on many critics’ lists of greatest films ever made. But how well do you really know the movie? Author Noah Isenberg reveals secrets and surprises of “Casablanca” and considers why it remains so important to this day.

Comedy Night: Saturday, November 11

7:30 p.m.

Susan Silver: Hot Pants in Hollywood

What could be better than to be successful in Hollywood! Well, funny you should ask. Susan Silver was one of the first female TV comedy writers, with credits like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maude and Bob Newhart. She also wrote a dating column about searching for “Mr. Adequate” and built a successful career in New York. Of course, things – and especially in Hollywood – are rarely what they seem. Susan Silver’s reveals her story in this tale of love, fame and a very funny life.

Alan Zweibel

For This We Left Egypt? A Passover Haggadah for Jews and Those Who Love Them

There are many ways to prepare for and celebrate Passover. In For This We Left Egypt, authors Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel and Adam Mansbach recommend using a blowtorch. Just a few terrific bursts of fire and your chametz is gone! And how about arriving in a place that’s, well, a little different after all those years in the desert? In this book, there’s no land of milk and honey. It’s the land of rocks and Yorkshire terrier-sized scorpions. If it’s time to shake things up a bit at your Passover table, you won’t want to miss this fun and funny version of the Haggadah that practically guarantees everyone will actually stay awake throughout the entire evening.

Family Program

1-4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12

Sammy the Spider Comes to Book Fair – Chanukah, Israel, Mitzvah, and First Friend

Join us for a fun event with an adorable spider who loves Jewish holidays! Sammy the Spider lives in the Shapiro home where he has learned all about Chanukah and Shabbat, where he picked up a few Hebrew words and where he makes a new friend from Israel. We’ll have fun and games and plenty of surprises for all of Sammy’s guests!

5:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12

Adam Greenberg stepped up to the plate. Formerly with the Lansing Lugnuts, Greenberg was at bat on for the first time as a member of the Chicago Cubs. In an instant he was down, smacked in the head by a 92-mile-an-hour fast pitch that left him with a compound skull fracture. What does it mean to endure a terrible trauma and refuse to give up? This is Adam Greenberg’s story – and a story for everyone.