Robert Alter
Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

Robert Alter is professor of the Graduate School and emeritus professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the award-winning author of two dozen books, including his three-volume translation of the Hebrew Bible. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Author Photograph © Peg Skarpinski

Mordechai Bar-On
Moshe Dayan: Israel’s Controversial Hero

Mordechai Bar-On was a senior research fellow at Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem. He served in the Israel Defense Forces as General Moshe Dayan's bureau chief during the Sinai Campaign, and in 1984 was elected to the Knesset, Israel's parliament. He died in 2021 at age 92.

Adam Begley
Houdini: The Elusive American

Adam Begley is the author of Updike and The Great Nadar. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and for many years the books editor of The New York Observer. He lives in England. 

Author photograph © Zach Gross

Joseph Berger
Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence

Joseph Berger was for thirty years a New York Times reporter, columnist, and editor and continues to contribute periodically. He has also taught urban affairs at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College. His family memoir Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust (2001) was chosen as a notable book of the year by the Times.

Author photograph © Brenda Berger

David Biale
Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah

David Biale is Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis. The author or editor of ten books, he has recently completed Hasidism: A New History, forthcoming with Princeton University Press.

Ian Buruma
Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah

Ian Buruma is Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of many books, including Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam and the Limits of Tolerance, and contributes to Harper’s and the New Yorker. He lives in New York City.

Author Photograph © Merlijn Doomernik

David Cesarani
Disraeli: The Novel Politician

David Cesarani was a research professor in History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and director of the Holocaust Research Centre. His books include Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer,” winner of the National Jewish Book Award for history; Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal, and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945–1948, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for history and nominated for a Golden Dagger for nonfiction; and Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind. In 2005 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his work in establishing a Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK. He died in 2015, at the age of 58.

Author photograph © Zadig Productions

Rachel Cohen
Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade

Rachel Cohen is the author of A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Believer, Best American Essays, and many other publications. She teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She keeps a notebook on looking at paintings at RacheleCohen.com.

Author photograph © Peter Serling, 2013

Annie Cohen-Solal
Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel

Annie Cohen-Solal is an academic and a cultural historian. Born in Algiers, she received her Ph.D. degree from the Sorbonne. Her books include the acclaimed Sartre: A Life and Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli, winner of the ArtCurial Prize. She has served as cultural counselor to the French Embassy in the United States.

Jeremy Dauber
Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew

Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University. His books include Jewish Comedy and The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, both finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, and, most recently, American Comics: A History. He lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Tilly Blair

Hasia R. Diner
Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World

Hasia R. Diner is Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Doug Levere, University at Buffalo Communications

Lillian Faderman
Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death

Lillian Faderman is a renowned scholar of LGBT and ethnic history literature. She has received numerous awards for her previous eleven books, three of which were named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. She lives in La Jolla, CA.

Author photograph © Donn R. Nottage

Shmuel Feiner
Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity

Shmuel Feiner is professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar Ilan University and holds the Samuel Braun Chair for the History of the Jews in Prussia. His books include Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness and The Jewish Enlightenment (winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award).

Saul Friedländer
Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt

Saul Friedländer is a renowned historian of the Holocaust and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of History and Club 39 Endowed Chair in Holocaust Studies at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Neal Gabler
Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power

Neal Gabler is the author of four previous books. Both An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other books include Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, which was named nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine, and Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.

Author photograph © Christina Gabler

Dorothy Gallagher
Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life

Dorothy Gallagher is the author of Hannah’s Daughters and All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, and two volumes of memoirs. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Grand Street. She lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Lisa Silvestri

Steven Gimbel
Einstein: His Space and Times

Steven Gimbel is the Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Chair for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities as well as chair of the philosophy department at Gettysburg College. He lives in Mount Airy, MD.

Martin Goodman
Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World

Martin Goodman is emeritus professor of Jewish studies at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His numerous books include A History of Judaism; Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations; and Josephus’s The Jewish War: A Biography. He lives in Oxford, UK.

Author photograph © Fisher Studio

Vivian Gornick
Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life

Vivian Gornick is the author of, among other books, the acclaimed memoir Fierce Attachments and three essay collections: The End of the Novel of Love, Approaching Eye Level, and, most recently, The Men in My Life. She lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Esther Hyneman

Robert Gottlieb
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt

Robert Gottlieb is the author of Lives and Letters, George Balanchine, and Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens. His career in publishing—as editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker—is legendary.

Author photograph © Mimi Gnoli

Hillel Halkin
Jabotinsky: A Life

Hillel Halkin is a writer, critic, and translator. He is the author of Across the Sabbath River and Yehuda Halevi, both of which won the National Jewish Book Award. His most recent book is Melisande! What Are Dreams? He lives in Israel.

Molly Haskell
Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films

Molly Haskell is a film critic and the author of five previous books, including From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Love and Other Infectious Diseases, and Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited. She writes and lectures widely on film. She lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Jim Carpenter

Adina Hoffman
Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

Adina Hoffman is an award-winning essayist and biographer. The author of four books, including Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, she lives in Jerusalem and New Haven.

Author photograph © Peter Cole

Barry W. Holtz
Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

Barry W. Holtz is Theodore and Florence Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is author of five previous books and the recipient of a National Jewish Book Award. He lives in New York City.

Avner Holtzman
Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew

Avner Holtzman is professor of Hebrew literature, Tel Aviv University, and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is author or editor of more than fifty books and has taught and extensively studied prominent modern Hebrew authors including Bialik, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, and others.

Author photograph © Sasson Tiram

James Kaplan
Irving Berlin: New York Genius

James Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.

Author photograph © Erinn Hartmann

Francine Klagsbrun
Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream

Francine Klagsbrun is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel. She has been a columnist for the Jewish Week and Moment and has contributed articles to the New York Times, Ms. magazine, Newsweek, and other national publications.

Author photograph © Joan Roth

Mark Kurlansky
Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One

Mark Kurlansky has written, edited, or contributed to twenty books, which have been translated into twenty-five languages and won numerous prizes. His previous books Cod, Salt, 1968, and The Food of a Younger Land were all New York Times best-sellers.

Author photograph © Sylvia Plachy

John Lahr
Arthur Miller: American Witness

John Lahr has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 1991, where for twenty-one years he was its senior drama critic. He is the author of eighteen books, including Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Author photograph © Paul Kolnik

Berel Lang
Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life

Berel Lang is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, State University of New York, Albany. He is the author or editor of twenty-one books, including Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, The Concept of Style, and, most recently, Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence. He lives in Riverdale, NY.

Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger

Liel Leibovitz
Stan Lee: A Life in Comics

Liel Leibovitz is the author of A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen. He is a senior writer for Tablet magazine and a cohost of its popular podcast, Unorthodox. He lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Chia Messina

Wendy Lesser
Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance

Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review and the author of a novel and ten previous books of nonfiction, including the widely acclaimed You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and other publications.

Author photograph © Anne Wagner

Deborah E. Lipstadt
Golda Meir: Israel’s Matriarch

Deborah E. Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Her award-winning books include Denying the Holocaust, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (the basis for the film Denial), Antisemitism: Here and Now, The Eichmann Trial, and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945. Ambassador Lipstadt currently serves as the U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. She lives in Washington, DC.

Author photograph © Osnat Perelshtein

Arthur Lubow
Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows

Arthur Lubow is a journalist and critic who has been a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a staff writer at the New Yorker. His latest book is Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer.

Author photograph © Sharon Cooke

Alberto Manguel
Maimonides: Faith in Reason

Alberto Manguel is an internationally acclaimed reader, writer, and interpreter of a broad array of texts. From 2015 to 2018 he was the director of the National Library of Argentina. His books include The Library at Night and Fabulous Monsters. He lives in Lisbon.

Author photograph © Craig Stephenson

Daniel C. Matt
Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation

Daniel Matt is a leading authority on Kabbalah. His nine-volume annotated translation, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, was honored with a National Jewish Book Award and has been hailed as “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.” He lives in Berkeley, CA.

David Mikics
Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker

David Mikics is Moores Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Houston, as well as a columnist for Tablet magazine. His most recent books are Bellow’s People and Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.

Author photograph © Judah S. Harris

Yehudah Mirsky
Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution

Yehudah Mirsky is Associate Professor of the Practice of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He served in the U.S. State Department’s human rights bureau, lived in Israel for the past decade, and has contributed to the New Republic, the Economist, and many other publications.

Author photograph © David Vaaknin

Benny Morris
Sidney Reilly: Master Spy

Benny Morris is an Israeli historian, formerly professor of history in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University. He is the author of a dozen books, including 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War and Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001.

Author photograph © Yagi Morris

Steven Nadler
Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam

Steven Nadler, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author of several books, including Rembrandt's Jews and Spinoza: A Life, winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award. He is William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue-Bascom Professor in Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Author photograph © Rob Streiffer

Ilana Pardes
Ruth: A Migrant’s Tale

Ilana Pardes is Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature and the director of the Center for Literary Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible and The Song of Songs: A Biography.

Author photograph © Bruno Charbit

Derek Penslar
Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. His previous books include Jews and the Military: A History and Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe.

Author photograph © University of Toronto, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Adam Phillips
Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst

Adam Phillips is former Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, and is now a psychoanalyst in private practice. His most recent book is One Way and Another: New and Selected Essays.

Author photograph © Jerry Bauer

George Prochnik
Heinrich Heine: Writing the Revolution

George Prochnik is the author of Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem. His previous book, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, received the 2014 National Jewish Book Award for Biography/Memoir.

Author photograph © Elisabeth Prochnik

Francine Prose
Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern

New York Times best-selling author and National Book Award finalist Francine Prose has written more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Caravaggio and Reading Like a Writer.

Author photograph ©  Lisa Yuskavage

Itamar Rabinovich
Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman

Itamar Rabinovich is president of The Israel Institute (Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv); Global Distinguished Professor, New York University; and Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow, Brookings Institution. He served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States and chief negotiator with Syria from 1992–1996. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Jeffrey Rosen
Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet

Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, and a contributing editor of the Atlantic. His books include The Supreme Court, The Most Democratic Branch, The Naked Crowd, The Unwanted Gaze, and, as co-editor, Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.

Joshua Rubenstein
Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life

Joshua Rubenstein was a staff member of Amnesty International USA for 37 years and is a longtime Associate of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is author or editor of ten books, including Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, and The Last Days of Stalin. He received a National Jewish Book Award for Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

Author photograph © Richard Sobol

Maurice Samuels
Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair

Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University. He is the author most recently of The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern. He lives in Branford, CT.

Author photograph © Harold Shapiro

Anita Shapira
Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel

Anita Shapira is professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, where she previously served as dean of the Faculty of Humanities and held the Ruben Merenfeld Chair for the Study of Zionism. Her previous books include Israel: A History, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She lives in Tel Aviv.

Allen Shawn
Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician

Allen Shawn is a composer, pianist, educator, and author who lives in Vermont and teaches composition and music history at Bennington College. His previous books include Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey and Twin: A Memoir.

Author photograph ©  Alex Burgess 2014

Michael Shnayerson
Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream

Michael Shnayerson became a contributing editor at Vanity Fair in 1986 and is the author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects, including Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art. He lives in New York City.

Author photograph © Holden Steinberg

Rachel Shteir
Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter

Rachel Shteir is an award-winning essayist, writer, and critic, and is head of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. She is the author of Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show, Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. She lives in Chicago.

Author photograph © Doug McGoldrick

Lee Siegel
Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence

Lee Siegel, author of four books and the recipient of a National Magazine Award, writes about culture and politics for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.

Author photograph © Christina Gillham

Benjamin Taylor
Proust: The Search

Benjamin Taylor is a founding member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty at the New School and the author or editor of six previous books, including The Book of Getting Even and Saul Bellow: Letters.

Author photograph © Joanna Eldredge Morrisey

James Traub
Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy

James Traub teaches foreign policy and intellectual history at New York University, where he is a Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation. He has written numerous books, and is a columnist and contributor at Foreign Policy.

Author photograph © Elizabeth Easton

Shulamit Volkov
Walther Rathenau: Weimar’s Fallen Statesman

Shulamit Volkov is professor emerita of modern European history, Tel Aviv University. Her most recent book is Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation. She lives in Herzliya, Israel.

Steven Weitzman
Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom

Steven Weitzman is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion at Stanford University. He was awarded the Gustave O. Arlt Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in the Humanities for his first book, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative, and has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Yad-Hanadiv Foundation. His other books include Surviving Sacrilege and The Jews: A History.

Marc Wortman
Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power

Marc Wortman is an independent historian and award-winning freelance journalist. His books include 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War and The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. He lives in New Haven, CT.

Author photograph © Jodi Cohen

Yair Zakovitch
Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch

Yair Zakovitch is Emeritus Father Takeji Otsuki Professor of Bible, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor of Jewish Peoplehood, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. He is author of numerous commentaries and monographs on the Hebrew Bible, and co-author (with Avigdor Shinan) of two Israeli bestsellers. He lives in Israel.

Author photograph © Valerie Zakovitch

Julian E. Zelizer
Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books, and has written for CNN.com, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He lives in New York, NY.

Author photograph © Zoran Jelenic

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
Moses: A Human Life

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg lectures on the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic thought at academic, psychoanalytic, and Jewish educational institutions around the world. In 1995 she received the National Jewish Book Award for Genesis: The Beginning of Desire. She lives in Jerusalem.

Author photograph © Joan Roth