Literatour is a community-wide celebration in its fourth year with 8 exceptional events featuring authors, celebrities, and cultural influencers throughout Berks County from October 2022 to May 2023.
Literatour is being presented by Jewish Federation of Reading in partnership with Exeter Community Library.
5/3/2023
6:00 PM
Exeter Community Library
Weina Dai Randel
“The Last Rose of Shanghai”
In Japanese-occupied Shanghai, two people from different cultures are drawn together by fate and the freedom of music…
1940. Aiyi Shao is a young heiress and the owner of a formerly popular and glamorous Shanghai nightclub. Ernest Reismann is a penniless Jewish refugee driven out of Germany, an outsider searching for shelter in a city wary of strangers. He loses nearly all hope until he crosses paths with Aiyi. When she hires Ernest to play piano at her club, her defiance of custom causes a sensation. His instant fame makes Aiyi’s club once again the hottest spot in Shanghai. Soon they realize they share more than a passion for jazz―but their differences seem insurmountable, and Aiyi is engaged to another man.
As the war escalates, Aiyi and Ernest find themselves torn apart, and their choices between love and survival grow more desperate. In the face of overwhelming odds, a chain of events is set in motion that will change both their lives forever.
From the electrifying jazz clubs to the impoverished streets of a city under siege, The Last Rose of Shanghai is a timeless, sweeping story of love and redemption.
4/18/2023
12:00 PM
Jewish Cultural Center
Jean Hoffmann Lewanda
“Witness to History-From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience”
This is a memoir of an 18-year-old Austrian Jew who escaped to Shanghai, China by himself in 1938. Upon arriving in China, not only does Paul support himself, but also helps his parents, sister, aunt and uncle leave Europe and survive World War II in Shanghai. Paul relates how the Sephardic Jewish community came to the aid of the Jews fleeing Central Europe. He provides a detailed description of the two years that the family was confined to the Hongkew Ghetto. While many in the Jewish community elected to leave China as soon as possible after WWII, Paul and his young wife, Shirley, elected to stay on after the Communist takeover. This decision led to a sequence of events that rivaled the perils of the war years.
3/29/2023
7:00 PM
Albright College
David de Jong
“Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties”
Succession meets the Third Reich in Nazi Billionaires. In this landmark work of investigative journalism, David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany’s wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich – and how America allowed them to get away with it. The heirs of the Nazi billionaires have only grown wealthier in the generations since, while their reckoning with this dark past remains incomplete at best. Many of them continue to control swaths of the world economy, owning iconic brands whose products blanket the globe. The brutal legacy of the dynasties that dominated Daimler-Benz, co-founded Allianz, and still control Porsche, Volkswagen, and BMW has remained hidden in plain sight — until now. Nazi Billionaires shows how German tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured slave laborers, and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler’s army as Europe burned around them. De Jong also exposes how America’s political expediency enabled these billionaires to get away with their crimes, covering up a bloodstain that deles the German and global economies to this day.
3/1/2023
6:00 PM
Exeter Community Library
Steven Hartov
“The Last of the Seven”
A spellbinding novel of World War II based on the little-known history of the X Troop —a team of European Jews who escaped the Continent only to join the British Army and return home to exact their revenge on Hitler’s military. A lone soldier wearing a German uniform stumbles into a British military camp in the North African desert with an incredible story to tell. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation meant to infiltrate a Nazi base, trading on the soldiers’ perfect fluency in German. For this man is not British born but instead a German Jew seeking revenge for the deaths of his family back home in Berlin. As the Allies advance into Europe, the young lieutenant is brought to recover in Sicily, where he’s recruited by a British major to join the newly formed X Troop, a commando unit composed of German and Austrian Jews that’s training for a top secret mission at a nearby camp in the Sicilian hills. They are all “lost boys,” driven not by patriotism but by vengeance. Drawing on meticulous research into this unique group of soldiers, The Last of the Seven is a lyrical, propulsive historical novel perfect for readers of Mark Sullivan, Robert Harris and Alan Furst.
2/21/2023
12:00 PM
Jewish Cultural Center
Andrew Lawler
“Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City”
In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past.
In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city’s streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. It has served as a cudgel, a way to stake a claim to the most contested city on the planet. Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above.
Under Jerusalem takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.
1/17/2023
12:00 PM
Jewish Cultural Center
Matthew Daub
“Leaving Eastern Parkway”
Brooklyn’s Hasidic community of Lubavitchers is turned upside down when family tragedy strikes and everyday life changes forever in the life of Zev Altshul. He is first placed into the care of the closed and close-knit community where he grew up, but soon realizes he can’t stay. His saving grace is handball; it’s his gift from God, and the one thing he can rely on as he is shuttled, chased, and abandoned by trusted elders, family, and friends. Even as Zev never fully escapes from the guilt of his choices, he sets course across the United States to discover where loyalty really lies and what it means. He seeks out his long-lost sister, only to find himself as unprepared for life outside the Lubavitcher community as he was unwilling to remain. Forced out of his second home, Zev plays handball to support himself in the goyische world, but obligations he doesn’t fully understand still tie him to Crown Heights and follow him to Chicago and New Mexico threatening always to return Zev to life among the Lubavitchers. Lyrical, vivid, and thoroughly engaging, this is certainly among the first novels of its kind.
Daub lives and works in Berks County.
11/29/2022
11:00 AM
Jewish Cultural Center
Rebecca Soffer
“The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience”
Stay connected to your person, yourself, and the world around you in the aftermath of loss.
Modern Loss is all about eradicating the stigma and awkwardness around grief while also focusing on our capacity for resilience and finding meaning. In this interactive guide, Modern Loss co-founder Rebecca Soffer offers candid, practical, and witty advice for confronting a future without your person, honoring their memory, dealing with trigger days, managing your professional life, and navigating new and existing relationships. You’ll find no worn out platitudes or empty assurances here. With prompts, creative projects, innovative rituals, therapeutic-based exercises, and more, this is the place to explore the messy, long arc of loss on your own timeline — and without judgment.
10/26/2022
6:00 PM
Exeter Community Library
Alyson Richman & Shaunna Edwards
“The Thread Collectors: A Novel”
1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.
Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.
As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during the brutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors' family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.
Exeter Community Library
4565 Prestwick Dr. Reading, PA 19606
Jewish Cultural Center
1100 Berkshire Blvd. Suite 125
Wyomissing, PA 19610
Become a Patron
For program inquires contact Literatour Berks Coordinator Amanda Hornberger at AmandaH@jfreading.org .
For sponsorship inquiries contact Director of Development, Laurie Waxler at 610-921-0624 or email LaurieW@jfreading.org