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An account of how Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch promulgated an inclusive vision of Judaism in the context of advancing the civic equality of German Jews in the nineteenth century

In Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Religious Universalism and the German-Jewish Quest for Emancipation, Moshe Miller contends that nineteenth-century German Jews of all denominations actively sought acceptance within German society and aspired to achieve full emancipation from the many legal strictures on their status as citizens and residents. While non-Orthodox Jews sought a large measure of cultural assimilation, Orthodox Jews were content with more delimited acculturation, but they were no less enthusiastic about achieving emancipation and acceptance in German society. There was one issue, though, which was seen by non-Jewish critics of emancipation as a barrier to granting civic rights to Jews: namely, the alleged tribalism of Judaism and the supposedly chauvinistic notion of Jews as “the Chosen People.”

These charges could not go unanswered, and in the writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the leading thinker of the Orthodox camp, they did not. Hirsch stressed the universalism of the Jewish ethic and the humanistic concern for the welfare of all mankind, which he believed was one of the core teachings of Judaism. His colleagues in the German Orthodox rabbinate largely concurred with Hirsch’s assessment. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Religious Universalism and the German-Jewish Quest for Emancipation places Hirsch’s views in their historical context and provides a detailed account of his attitude toward non-Jews and the Christianity practiced by the vast majority of nineteenth-century Europeans.

Addresses head-on the central issue of invasion timing in the Allied European strategy of World War II

In Second Front Now – 1943: An Opportunity Delayed, military historian Walter S. Dunn offers a sharply argued and meticulously researched reassessment of one of the most consequential strategic debates of World War II: the decision not to launch a full-scale Allied invasion of Western Europe in 1943. At a time when Nazi Germany was stretched across multiple fronts and the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the fighting in the East, the question of when—and where—to open a Second Front in Europe became a defining issue among Allied leaders.

Dunn explores the complex interplay of military planning, political caution, logistical constraints, and inter-Allied tensions that led Britain and the United States to postpone a cross-Channel invasion. Drawing from official records, wartime correspondence, and operational analyses, he reconstructs the strategic environment of 1943 and challenges the conventional wisdom that the delay was inevitable—or even prudent. Instead, Dunn presents a compelling case that an earlier invasion may have been both feasible and decisive, potentially shortening the war and altering the balance of postwar power.

With clarity and analytical rigor, the book examines the competing priorities of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, the influence of Mediterranean operations, and the evolving capabilities of Allied forces. It also considers the broader implications of the delay, including its impact on Soviet–Western relations and the shaping of the Cold War order that followed.

Blending narrative accessibility with scholarly depth, Second Front Now – 1943 is essential reading for students, historians, and anyone interested in the strategic decisions that defined the Allied path to victory. Dunn invites readers to reconsider a pivotal “missed moment” in history—and to reflect on how differently the war, and the world, might have unfolded.

Rita Felski’s new work brings literary studies into conversation with more affirmative and democratic forms of critical theory.

Literary critics associate the phrase “Frankfurt School” with early twentieth-century thinkers like Adorno or Benjamin, but contemporary German critical theory remains largely unknown. In this new book, Rita Felski draws on the work of a group of important philosophers and social theorists to offer fresh readings of literary texts by Robert Walser, Didier Eribon, Zadie Smith, Magda Szabo, John Williams, and Dionne Brand. 

Through five key concepts derived from her reading of German theory—disclosure, recognition, self-realization, lifeworld, and resonance—Felski asks how these literary texts articulate the relationship between intellectuals and others. Contrary to critical theories that discount everyday experience, new German thought reveals the ethical, existential, and political richness of such experience. Through this framework, Felski shows that literature, theory, and experience are not opposed but mutually constitutive.

In 1937, Josef and Marie Baum, of Bamberg, Germany, sent their seventeen-year-old son Kurt to begin a new life in America. Their letters, provided here in both the original German and English translation, recount the story of this middle-class Jewish family during the Nazi era. Kurt’s struggles to adapt to his new circumstances were met with little understanding from his parents, who were enduring a steadily worsening existence at the hands of the Nazis. The father’s desperate pleas prior to his forced deportation and murder constitute a final rupture in this poignant story. 

Bridging the Holocaust experience from both sides of the Atlantic, Separated by Worlds sheds light both on life in Nazi Germany and on the refugee experience in the United States. Unlike traditional exile literature focused on intellectual and cultural elites, the book documents the experiences of average citizens navigating escape and assimilation. The fifty letters at the center of the book, which communicate the parents’ needs, fears, and hopes to their son, offer an unusually intimate window into daily life under Nazi rule. The book is richly illustrated, and the letters are annotated and contextualized by several essays.

Deftly merging political and social history, Serbia under the Swastika looks at the interactions between Germany’s occupation policies, the various forces of resistance and collaboration, and the civilian population. Alexander Prusin reveals a German occupying force at war with itself. Pragmatists intent on maintaining a sedate Serbia increasingly gave way to Nazified agencies obsessed with implementing the expansionist racial vision of the Third Reich. As Prusin shows, the increasing reliance on terror catalyzed conflict between the nationalist Chetniks, communist Partisans, and the collaborationist government. Prusin unwraps the winding system of expediency that at times led the factions to support one-another against the Germans--even as they fought a ferocious internecine civil war to determine the future of Yugoslavia.

Comprehensive and judicious, Serbia under the Swastika is a rare English-language foray into the still-fraught history of Serbia in World War II.

Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out is an English translation of the German book Farbe bekennen, edited by author May Ayim, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz. It is the first published book by Afro-Germans. It is the first written use of the term Afro-German.

The common understanding is that honor belongs to a bygone era, whereas civil society belongs to the future and modern society. Heikki Lempa argues that honor was not gone or even in decline between 1700 and 1914, and that civil society was not new but had long roots that stretched into the Middle Ages. In fact, what is peculiar for this era in Germany were the deep connections between practices of honor and civil society. This study focuses on collective actions of honor and finds them, in a series of case studies, at such communal spaces as schools, theaters, lunch and dinner tables, spas, workers’ strikes, and demonstrations. It is in these collective actions that we see civil society in making.

The Spaces of Honor sees civil society not primarily as an idea or an intellectual project but as a set of practices shaped in physical spaces. Around 1700, the declining power of religious authorities allowed German intellectuals to redefine civil society, starting with a new language of honor. Then, in the middle of the eighteenth century, an increasing number of voluntary associations and public spaces turned it into reality. Here, honor provided cohesion. In the nineteenth century, urbanization and industrialization ushered in powerful forces of atomization that civil society attempted to remedy. The remedy came from social and physical spaces that generated a culture of honor and emotional belonging. We find them in voluntary associations, spas, revived guilds, and labor unions. By the end of the nineteenth century, honor was deeply embedded in German civil society.

A study of the twentieth-century construction of a Jewish mystical tradition by German Jewish intellectuals.

For most of European history, the notion of Jewish spirituality was unthinkable—buried beneath a pervasive desire to understand Judaism as uniquely material and Christianity as uniquely spiritual. In Spirit and Folk, Amir Engel tells the story of how a group of Jewish intellectuals, seeking greater involvement in political life, worked to invent a mystical tradition for Judaism amid the existential crises of twentieth-century Germany.

Beginning with Martin Buber in 1900 and ending with Gershom Scholem in 1942, Engel traces the rich debate among thinkers both well-known and forgotten about the need to imagine and construct a uniquely Jewish mystical tradition from historical religious sources. This quest and the tradition that emerged, Engel argues, developed in response to one of the most volatile questions of the last century: can Jews be Germans? The invention of Jewish spirituality, Engel shows, was not only a religious innovation but also a political gambit—a demand to be accepted as equal contributors to the German national project.