While the subject is, indeed, very serious, there’s also playfulness within the narrative. I have no idea how Mr. Uris managed to do that

The novel does jump around, and when that happens the reader has to pay attention. Even if you do , what’s real and what’s not is always up for questioning.

Dr. Ryland Grace woke up on a space-ship with no idea why he’s there. His crew-mates are dead and the spaceship is millions of miles from home.

How Beautiful We Were is, in a word, fatalistic. The villagers are fighting a lost cause,– The David vs. Goliath story slowly morphs into a nuanced conflict.

Apeirogon by Colum McCann is an extraordinary book, contemporary –historical-fiction of an Israeli man and a Palestinian man, both who lost young daughters

Edison by Edmund Morris is a very unique as far as biographies go, one in the way telling of the life of Thomas Alva Edison in reverse chronological order

Eyewitness: A Personal Account of the Unraveling of the Soviet Union by Vladimir Pozner is an account of the 72 hour coup tried to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev

Just as Cervantes’ Don Quichotte made fun of the junk-culture in his era, Mr. Rushdie goes to a literary war with the garbage that Americans are inundated with

Alexander the Great His Life and His Mysterious Death author Anthony Everitt paints of picture of his subject with all his strengths & weaknesses a flawed human

The stories collected shattered many lives, not the least the childhood of the person telling. Several of them never recovered after their childhood ended.