Book Notes

American Jewish Life

Incidents of Travel and Adventures in the Far West, with Colonel Frémont's Last Expedition, by Solomon Nunes Carvalho. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 130 pp. $16.95. ISBN 0-80322-6444-5.

In August 1853, an American-born Sephardic Jew, Solomon Nunes Carvalho, accepted John Frémont's invitation to join his fifth expedition to find the best overland route to California. A Baltimore artist, inventor, and daguerreotypist, Carvalho was given the job of creating a photographic record of the lands and peoples along the way. He became the first Jewish writer to publish accounts of the Great American West and was also one of the first people to photograph it.

Mixed Nuts: America's Love Affair with Comedy Teams from Burns and Allen to Belushi and Aykroyd, by Lawrence J. Epstein. New York: Public Affairs, 2004. 305 pp. $26.00. ISBN 1-58648-190-8.

In this book, Lawrence J. Epstein presents a history of the great American comedy teams. He revisits some of their best-loved routines and reveals the personal stories that lay behind them, arguing that from 19th-century vaudeville to the stars of silent movies, radio, and sitcoms, comedians like Burns and Allen, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the Smothers Brothers, the casts of Friends and Seinfeld and beyond, have provided wit and wisdom that have helped Americans respond to the turmoil of current events.

Ancient World and Archaeology

The Bible in the British Museum: Interpreting the Evidence, by T. C. Mitchell. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2004. 136 pp. $22.95. ISBN 0-8091-4292-9.

This book examines archaeological finds in the British Museum that document events narrated in the Bible and discusses the contribution they make to our knowledge of the culture and history of biblical times.

Art, Music, and Film

The Grey Zone: Director's Notes and Screenplay, by Tim Blake Nelson. New York: Newmarket Press, 2003. 182 pp. $18.95. ISBN 1-55704-582-8.

Tim Blake Nelson's account of what inspired him and how he prepared himself and others to make his movie The Grey Zone reveals how and why a writer/director chooses such a difficult subject and surmounts its challenges. First realized as a play, the story is based on historical events, centering on Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando squad, prisoners assigned work in the crematoria, and their struggle to organize the only armed revolt in October of 1944. To acquaint his cast and crew with the difficult material, Nelson summarized his research and his cinematic vision in a lengthy pre-production memo, which is reproduced in this book. Also included are his screenplay, his annotated reading list, movie stills, excerpts from an essay by Primo Levi, and the source chapter from the book Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli.

How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film, by Erin Runions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 208 pp. $85.00 (c); $26.95 (p). ISBN 0-312-29572-3 (c); 0-312-29573-1(p).

This volume reads scenes from several films alongside biblical texts. It is less centered on direct citation of the Bible than on analysis of biblical influence in culture.

Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, edited by Mason Klein. New York: Jewish Museum and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 241 pp. $50.00. ISBN 0-300-10264-X.

Amedeo Modigliani's portraits, nudes, drawings, and primitivistic sculpture have been examined for the most part in the context of his so-called bohemian, anti-intellectual lifestyle. This book looks at the artist and his art from a variety of perspectives: his heritage as a Sephardic Jew, his engagement with the dialogues of the most radical of his contemporaries, the influence of tribal art and Judaism on his portraiture, the representation of his female nudes from a feminist cultural perspective, and the reception of his work in...