Diane Cole

Family Secrets
“We beam with pleasure. We are in a place where our name is known. For both of us, this is astonishing. An absolute first.”

Not So Innocent Abroad
Mark Twain's book about his travels to the Holy Land and back is his bestselling book over the course of his lifetime and remains one of the bestselling travel books of all time.

In Giorgio Bassani’s Memory Garden
If you visit Ferrara, Italy, you can let Giorgio Bassani be your melancholy guide as you stroll along “the crowded rows of stores, shops and little outlets facing each other” to arrive at the synagogue’s “baked-red facade.”

Ink and Blood
Arthur Szyk may well be the only great Jewish artist whose work countless people recognize simply because they have attended a Passover Seder. Less well known are the explicit connections between the Egyptian pharaoh and Hitler that Szyk had embedded in his original version of the haggadah he created in the 1930s.
The Wandering Reporter
Read 86 years after it was originally published, The Wandering Jew Has Arrived can be seen as a chilling and prophetic piece of historical reportage.

Vegetarian in Vilna
The long, brutal winters and meaty cuisine of Eastern Europe don’t immediately make one think of garden-fresh vegetarian recipes.
Is Beauty Power?
With charm, business savvy, and determination Kracow-born Rubinstein transformed herself from Chaja to Helena to “Madame.”