On Either Side of War

For the Washington Post, 2 September, Michael Dirda reviews Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss, about one of pre-World War II's leading German Jewish families.

Donald Rayfield,"Killing Fields," Literary Review, September, reviews Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin and Norman M. Naimark's Stalin's Genocides: Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity.

The late Bernard Knox was a distinguished classicist. Earlier, he had fought beside the Republican forces in Spain and been parachuted behind enemy lines in France to help coordinate its resistance work with the Allies. The New Republic reproduces his remarkable report on"the Jedburgh Operation".

Jonathan Mirsky,"'Livelihood Issues'," Literary Review, September, reviews Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62.

Dwight Garner,"Simon Wiesenthal, the Man Who Refused to Forget," NYT, 2 September, and Ron Rosenbaum,"Self-Made Golem," Tablet, 2 September, review Tom Segev's Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, trans. by Ronnie Hope.

Manan Ahmed,"The cultural damage of the 'war on terror'," The National, 2 September, reviews Amitava Kumar's A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb and features the art of Daisy Rockwell. She paints and blogs as Lapata, but the artist is the granddaughter of Norman Rockwell and has a doctorate in south Asian literature from the University of Chicago.