The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, October 2013: Every writer, established or aspiring, has at one time or another looked around and decided, “My life would make a great book.” Some of them are sadly mistaken. But journalist David Laskin’s life--or rather that of his forbears, three generations of a Russian Jewish family originally named HaKoen--has made a fantastic book. Despite its name, The Family is not about the Mafia, or the Mansons, but really about one particular, ordinary/extraordinary twentieth century shtetl clan. But you don’t have to be Jewish to be fascinated by the six children of a Torah scribe on the western fringe of the Russian empire; they, like people everywhere, were buffeted by political and social and economic upheavals of their times. One branch of the family ended up in America as the prosperous founders of Maidenform lingerie; another repatriated to Israel; the third suffered the Holocaust. While I tended to favor the stories about the American branch (how can you not love a 4’ 11” Russian revolutionary, who, with her husband Wolf, invented the brassiere in 1924 and got filthy rich in ladies underwear in the depression?), the other HaKoens-turned-Cohens provided plenty of educational entertainment as well. You think you know about the Russian revolution? Try seeing it through Laskin’s ancestors’ eyes. Likewise, WWII and Zionism. This is a great, big-hearted book about how time and place modifies family, whatever or wherever its roots. --Sara Nelson