Books - Index of favorites, roughly. An ongoing project.

WORLD WAR II

The Holocaust:

Rabbi Shmuel ben David of "Isaac's Torah"  A friend of the main character in the book, who is also caught in decades changing times, including the Holocaust. Discussions with the Rabbi - includes the Idea, vs. the later System implementing it, and becoming more focused on its own (the System's) survival than the Idea.

The Seventh Well,
by Fred Wander, accounts of life in various concentration camps, including Buchenwald, see ://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Hoffman-t.html

The Diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942, edited by his sister, Chava Pressburger, see ://www.groveatlantic.com/grove/bin/wc.dll?groveproc~genauth~5238~0/ and Petr Ginz, Places, Lens and Legacy, Acknowledgement; Petr Ginz, Places, Lens and Legacy.

HUMANS

The Selfish Gene, book by Richard Dawkins 1989 - See ://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Books/selfish.shtml/ There is altruism hard-wired, would you believe.

GYPSIES, ROMA

John Updike, "Drawn to Gypsies: Six Years in the South of France"

"Zoli" by Colum McCann, Random House 2007; based loosely on the life of Papusza, a gypsy singer who was shunned by the community for her work, and lived in Slovakia, before and during the time of the Fascists. See Reviews of "Zoli"