chilled schav (sorrel soup) with sliced egg, boiled yearling fowl in a pot, and Vienna almond crescent.

One anecdote is juicier than the next, the literary equivalent of those lavish spreads at the Jewish resorts in the Catskills of yore where Brooks got his start and whose menus Denby lovingly recalls: ...

Grandpa Moshe was washing sorrel and scallions for schav in an outdoor sink. That’s as far back in my family as I can go. I wonder how my grandparents prepared for Passover in their hometowns of ...

chilled schav (sorrel soup) with sliced egg, boiled yearling fowl in a pot, and Vienna almond crescent. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Got a question? Put a reporter on it.

When Lytton Strachey set out to write “Eminent Victorians” in 1918, he sought to enliven the stuffy Victorian conventions of biographical writing by portraying his subjects with warts and all.

Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein. In his new book, “Eminent Jews,” David Denby profiles the rich, messy lives of four immensely talented American Jews who threw off the cons ...