Nine new books sent to us by the best PR agents in the country - including one about JFK's efforts for Middle East peace.

Swagbelly: A novel for today's gentleman by DJ Levien, Published by Plume, 231 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: A playboy Jewish pornographer experiences a mid-life crisis complete with his Bar Mitzvah-aged son wanting to convert to Catholicism.
Opening lines: Two-bedroom luxury condominium. Upper East Side, New York. Yvonne and Antonio are married -- only not to each other. Every day Yvonne stops by at their secret, prearranged time. Tommy, the doorman, discreetly tips his cap to her as she moves wordlessly by him to the elevator.
The Jewsweek verdict: This Jewish film director takes a stab at fiction and the result is a delicious tale of sex and guilt.

Best Jewish Writing 2003
Edited by Arthur Kurzweill, Published by Jossey-Bass, 396 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: This multi-genre anthology of previously published poetry, fiction, articles, and essays features works by Elie Wiesel, Alan Dershowitz, and Blue Greenberg. Opening lines: A letter to President George W. Bush from Elie Wiesel: Today Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is coming to see you. He comes as the elected head of a nation that is the United States' only dependable ally in that region. He comes to you, the leader of the free world, knowing that you continue to understand the great dangers confronting Israel's very existence.
The Jewsweek verdict: Since this is a compilation of articles published in the last year, much of it reads as dated material, but it gives an interesting overview of the year in review.

Imagining Zion: Dreams, designs, and realities in a century of Jewish settlement
by S. Ilan Troen, Published by Yale University Press, 339 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: This timely book tells the fascinating story of how Zionist colonizers planned and established nearly 700 agricultural settlements, towns, and cities from the 1880s to the present.
Opening lines: From the 1880s, Jews who swam against the stream and returned to Palestine came with increasingly precise and practical conceptions of how the country could be settled. The first generation of pioneers and planners imagined a land filled with villages in imitation of the Europe they had known before emigration. They assumed that the European experience could be applied directly to changing European Jewry into a Middle Eastern peasantry.
The Jewsweek verdict: Troen, a Brandeis professor, paints with broad and academic brushstrokes to help understand the current Middle East dilemma.

Beyond the Scandals: A guide to healthy sexuality for clergy by G. Lloyd Rediger, Published by Fortress Press, 235 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: Recent sexual scandals have rocked the North American religious scene - what has gone wrong, and how can clergy understand their own sexuality and their lives of service?
Opening lines: Media headlines and reports are drawing public attention to widespread clergy sexual misconduct. A spate of revelations, lawsuits, public recriminations, and even resignations of high-ranking clergy has revealed a systemic problem with clergy and left a wake of tragically damaged lives.
The Jewsweek verdict: This is not a rush-to-the-presses behind the headlines story. It's a thoughtful and an authoritative look at the issues endemic in clergy service -- written by a pastor.

Living a Year of Kaddish: A memoir
by Ari L. Goldman, Published by Schocken Books, 210 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: The best-selling author of The Search for God at Harvard continues his spiritual quest in this heartfelt and poignant account of the year he spent saying kaddish for his father.
Opening lines: The last time I saw my father was in August 1999, one month before he died. I was in Israel on university business, mapping out a trip to the Holy Land as part of a spring seminar that I teach at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. At that point, I hadn't seen my dad in a year and I could tell immediately that his health had deteriorated.
The Jewsweek verdict: An erudite personal look at something we will all go through.

In Praise of Nepotism: A natural history
by Adam Bellow, Published by Doubleday, 576 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: From Abraham to the Rothschilds, a learned, lively, and provocative look at a practice we all deplore - except when we?re involved in it ourselves.
Opening lines: Most Americans have seen Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, a Hollywood epic that celebrates three generations of an American mafia dynasty. Based on an equally popular novel by Mario Puzo, The Godfather's astonishing success fueled the rise of its director and his stars, spawning a host of imitations and establishing the gangster movie as the definitive American film genre of the late twentieth century.
The Jewsweek verdict: An exhaustive but entertaining look at an age-old topic.

Sixty-Six: A novel
by Barry Levinson, Published by Broadway Books, 256 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: Director Barry Levinson returns to his Jewish Baltimore roots in this nostalgic 1966-set tale where a group of friends deal with Vietnam, growing up, and their relationships with each other.
Opening lines: Neil lived up the street from me, from the time we used to live in the old neighborhood -- with row houses that went on for miles, to the end of the horizon - and then even after we moved to the new neighborhood, where there were three story wood homes covered in shingle, and front lawns with hedges, and big trees that seemed to stretch on forever.
The Jewsweek verdict: Unfortunately, it's just a rehash of his critically-acclaimed 1982 film Diner, but not as good.

Homosexuality and the Bible: Two views
by Dan O. Via and Roberta A.J. Gagnon, Published by Fortress Press, 117 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: In this brief book, two New Testament scholars discuss the relevant biblical texts on the subject of being gay.
Opening lines: The term "homosexual" was introduced into English from German in 1892. It is not derived from the Latin homo (man) but from the Greek homoios (like or same) and thus has to do with same-sex orientation. Needless to say the church is very much divided in its judgments about thus human phenomenon, so we have a topic that is delicate, sensitive, complex, divisive, and important.
The Jewsweek verdict: Like we said, it's written by two New Testament scholars, so there's little Jewish tradition in it.

Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance
by Warren Bass, Published by Oxford University Press, 335 pages, Purchase
Summary in a sentence: Warren Bass, a Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, investigates the Kennedy administration's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East concluding that it played a significant role in the development of the current state of affairs.
Opening lines: In November 1953, Eddie Jacobson, a Jewish Kansas City haberdasher who had the good fortune to pick as his business partner a scrappy young man named Harry S. Truman, was asked to introduce his old friend to an audience at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Before an eager crowd at the intellectual home of AAmerica's largest Jewish denomination, nestled in Morningside Heights in Manhattan, Jacobson tried to give the former president an introduction that rose to the occasion.
The Jewsweek verdict: Forty years after JFK's assasination, this is an enlightening historical look at Camelot's positive influence on modern-day Zionism.