Events in October–December 2018
- - Leah Garrett - Young Lions
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Leah Garrett - Young LionsProfessor Leah Garrett joins us to discuss her book Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel for the inaugural talk in our Alan S. Brown scholar series.
Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel shows how Jews, traditionally castigated as weak and cowardly, for the first time became the popular literary representatives of what it meant to be a soldier and what it meant to be an American. Revisiting best-selling works ranging from Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and uncovering a range of unknown archival material, Leah Garrett shows how Jewish writers used the theme of World War II to reshape the American public’s ideas about war, the Holocaust, and the role of Jews in postwar life. In contrast to most previous war fiction these new “Jewish” war novels were often ironic, funny, and irreverent and sought to teach the reading public broader lessons about liberalism, masculinity, and pluralism.
Leah Garrett is Director and Professor of Jewish Studies at Hunter College.
- - Steven Ossad - Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General
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Steven Ossad - Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI GeneralAuthor Steven Ossad joins us to discuss the remarkable career of Omar Bradley including his interactions with famed Jewish officers Maurice Rose and Mickey Marcus.
Omar Bradley rose to the pinnacle of the American military establishment and was the last of the major World War II military leaders to pass from the scene. Usually included as the last and youngest of the “five stars,” he had the most combat experience of the three American Army Group commanders in Europe during World War II and was our most important ground commander. Bradley’s postwar career ensures his legacy as one of the architects of U.S. Cold War global strategy. These latter contributions, as much as Bradley’s demonstrable World War II leadership, shaped U.S. history and culture in decisive, dramatic, and previously unexamined ways.
Steven L. Ossad is an independent historian and retired Wall Street technology analyst focused on leadership, command, and adapting military technology for executive management training.
He is the author (with Don R. Marsh) of Major General Maurice Rose: World War II’s Greatest Forgotten Commander. In 2014, he received a General and Mrs. Matthew Ridgway Research Award from the Army War College for his work on Omar Bradley. In 2003 he was presented an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. His article “Out of the Shadow and into the Light: Col. David 'Mickey' Marcus and U.S. Civil Affairs in World War II,” published in Army History, was a runner up for that same award in 2016.
- - Elizabeth Fox - We Are Going to Be Lucky: A WWII Love Story in Letters
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Elizabeth Fox - We Are Going to Be Lucky: A WWII Love Story in LettersWe Are Going to Be Lucky tells the story of a first-generation Jewish American couple separated by war, captured in their own words. Lenny and Diana Miller were married just one year before America entered World War II and Lenny was sent off to train and fight. Deeply committed to social justice, and bonded to one another by love, both vowed to write to one another daily. As Lenny made his way through basic training in Mississippi to the beaches of Normandy and eventually to the Battle of the Bulge, Diana struggled financially, giving up her job as a machinist to become a mother. The couple’s extraordinary letters, preserved in their entirety, reveal and reflect the excruciating personal sacrifices endured by both soldiers at war and their young families back home. After decades of gathering dust, the couples’ words have been carefully transcribed and thoughtfully edited and annotated by Elizabeth L. Fox, Lenny and Diana’s daughter.
Elizabeth Fox - We Are Going to Be Lucky: A WWII Love Story in Letters
- - Annual Hanukkah Party
