Overview

In War Bonds, Jack Goldman unspools a vivid, tender, humorous portrait of a Depression-era Jewish-American boyhood shaped by the competing energies of tradition, rebellion, assimilation, and war. He recounts life among a spirited cast of characters: a tap-dancing father dodging Orthodox expectations, a bar mitzvah faked for family pride, immigrant grandparents clinging to the old ways, and a Los Angeles childhood that veers from near tragedy to unexpected grace. Through intimate recollections-painful and sweet-he captures the strains of poverty, antisemitism, generational conflict, and the enduring power of family improvisation and resilience. War Bonds weaves memory, history, and identity into a deeply personal narrative of survival and belonging. This is a soulful, richly detailed story of growing up American, Jewish, and fiercely human in the 20th century.

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9780927379724

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Born 1934 in Bronx, NY, Jack Goldman graduated from UCLA, lived on an Israeli kibbutz, worked in Basel, Switzerland, then came to Cornell graduate school in 1968 on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. Active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, Goldman started the Glad Day Press and the Dateline Ithaca weekly newsletter. In 1980, he opened The Bookery, a used and antiquarian bookstore. His daughter was born in 1986; his son Dan passed away in 2013. Jack retired in 2020 to master the art of chess, and to write poetry, stories, and his memoir, War Bonds.

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