Oliver B. Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a lawyer, is a correspondent now based in Richmond, California.
His books, available on Amazon, include:
*A State of Readers: Nebraska’s Carnegie Libraries
* A Year at the Sorbonne: A Proustian Life
*Conflict in Vietnam: An Historical Perspective
*Empires in Collision
*Jewish Life in Omaha and Lincoln: A Photographic History
*Nebraska Courthouses: Contention, Compromise and Community
*Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe
*Theses and Dissertations on Southern Africa
*To Educate and Serve: The Centennial History of Creighton University School of Law, 1904-2004
*University of Nebraska at Omaha (With Les Valentine)
*Welcome to Omaha
He also contributed to
*Journal of Burma Studies Vol 3: Rise of a Mainland Trading State
*Western States Jewish History, Vol XXXIII, Number 2
© Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — The Jewish Book Council coined the phrase “The ProsenPeople” in 2011, an apt emblem worthy of exploration. The gift of literacy starts young. Parents read to children, then children read on their own. The sense of accomplishment evolved; crawling, toddling, walking, the alphabet, words, sentences, paragraphs, stories, chapters, […]
How we became bibliophiles Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak(c) Oliver Pollak RICHMOND, California — American wedding vows typically include the line “Till death do us part.” But affection may wither and politics dictate otherwise. We got married on May 8, Mother’s Day 1966. 52 years later, in 2018, our anniversary and Mother’s Day, May 13, are five days apart. These celebrations have been on
Thoughts on Mother’s Day and Marriage Read More »
Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food© Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — Some observations suggest sharing. They may be intimate, personal, or idiosyncratic. The task is to make them meaningful for a wider reading audience. My mission is to identify stories by Jews and of interest to Jews. Three recent San Diego Jewish World stories appear to have threads. I
How a Jewish story may link to others Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food
Andrew Friedman, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll, How Food Lover, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New American Profession, Ecco, $27.99, 464 pages © Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — Andrew Friedman gave a reading at San Francisco’s Omnivore Bookstore. After the talk I asked the author if the book has some Jewish content.
Jews and the culinary revolution Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food
By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — This story is based on The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky published in 2014. My wife Karen picked it up from the half price table at Powell’s Books in Portland last summer. Abramsky, an English born scholar lives in the Sacramento area. I read the book
The unifying effect of Passover Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Oliver Pollak
Absolutely on Music: Haruki Murakami Conversations with Seiji Ozawa (2017), 353 pages. © Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — I saw this book at the Jackson Hole Book Trader. Music and conversation between a brilliant author and a conductor — buy the book, find the time to read it. I already owned Parallels and Paradoxes:
Jews, Japan, and Music Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Music and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak© Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — The measurement of time changes after you retire. You do not have to go to work, and you can do pretty much what you want to do within financial and physical limits. The change of direction can be dramatic. Do not confuse sleeping late with depression, but exhaustion from
Trysts with the Nobel Prize in Literature Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak
(c) Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — Joseph Goldstein, born in Winnipeg in 1915, married Reva Atkin in Toronto in 1939. They moved to Los Angeles in 1948. They had two children, Karen, and Marty of blessed memory. Joe was a furrier and Reva worked for Prudential. They owned a house, went on vacation every summer, helped
By good deeds, father- in- law was known Read More »
International, Oliver Pollak, USA
(c) Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — I wanted to do something nice for my wife. That’s the Jewish part of this story. She went to the doctor and to exercise. Her cordovan Dansko clogs were mighty scuffed. I would put life into them. A Caymus Winery wood box held rags, brushes, Kiwi black, brown, and
Shining my wife’s shoes Read More »
Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food
© Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — Kippot are among the dozen or so things I have mindlessly acquired over the years. Orthodox Jews cover their heads in public and in worship as a sign of humility before God. Conservative Jews and increasingly Reform Jews cover their heads in synagogues and temples. We acquire skullcaps,
Keeping the kippot Read More »
Jewish Religion, Oliver PollakDonald H. Harrison, 77 Miles of Jewish Stories, History, Anecdotes & Tales of Travel Along I-8. (San Diego, 2017) By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California –There are book length guides to Jewish Italy, Germany, Poland, Eastern and Central Europe and New York City. Now there is a 338-page Jewish guide to a portion of San Diego
A book to take on the road Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Oliver PollakJustin Spring, The Gourmands’ Way, Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy; Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2017) © Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — This exuberant, well written, knowledgeable, and educational romp along French mid-century trans-Atlantic food and wine trails is a delicious book on the Gallic influence on food and
The Jew in the kitchen and wine cellar Read More »
Oliver Pollak, Travel and FoodElizabeth Rosner, Survivor Café, The Legacy of Trauma [and the] Labyrinth of Memory (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2017) 270 pages, $26 © Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — Elizabeth Rosner comes to trauma study under unique personal circumstances. Her father, Carl Rosner originally of Hamburg, was freed from Buchenwald concentration camp at the age of 15 in 1945
When trauma is transmitted parent to child Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak(c) Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — 2017 was an amazing year for five almost supernatural personal interactions. The story satisfies a long pent up interest in simultaneity. It certainly is better than 100 years ago, 1917, when America pitched into Europe’s war At Passover in Jackson, Wyoming I gave a drash at the Second Seder
2017 a year for Jewish mysteries, rumination Read More »
Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food