The Second Catastrophe - Softcover

Rotberg, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 097340650X ISBN 13: 9780973406504

Publisher: Mantua Books Ltd., 2003

Synopsis

Professor Norman Rosenfeld, a cultural historian at a small Canadian university, has almost finished his new and controversial book about Israel and the Jewish people. He learns that his daughter, on a one-year study program at an Israeli university, has been injured in a terrorist attack. Rosenfeld, a widower, rushes to Israel, along with his father, an elderly Holocaust survivor, named "Lucky". While in Israel visiting his injured daughter, at the height of the "Second Intifada", Rosenfeld, an Orthodox Jew, meets and falls in love with a secular Israeli woman. Chapters of the Professor's book on Israel and the Jewish people are interspersed amongst the events of the novel. The dramatic events and difficulties of Rosenfeld's life mirror catastrophic events in the life of the Jewish people. His journey to overcome these catastrophes is at the core of The Second Catastrophe.

About this title

About the Author:

Howard Rotberg is a Canadian publisher and author of 3 books, “The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author”, “Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada’s Lotus Land”, and now in its second (revised) edition, “TOLERism: The Ideology Revealed”. He has contributed over the years to many newspapers, magazines and websites, including Vancouver Sun, Pajamas Media, Frontpage Magazine, Freedom Press Canada Journal, and others. While Rotberg has written widely on socially-just urban planning, he also “walks the talk” through the re-development of heritage buildings converted into affordable rentals for the working poor, small artisans and cultural entities. Although a practicing lawyer for 20 years, Rotberg was never a stranger to controversy. He anonymously authored BoycottDaimlerChrysler.com, documenting Daimler’s wartime use of slave-labour and Chrysler’s failure to divulge this in its prospectus documents during its merger. Also a blogger, Rotberg authored “Second Generation Radical” in reference to his status as one of the Holocaust’s “second generation”—the children of Holocaust survivors—wherein he argued their central duty was to take a leadership role in ensuring a Holocaust never happens again, whether by Islamist terrorists, or Iranian nuclear bomb. As the founder of Mantua Books, a fast-growing, niche publishing house providing a platform for respected authors writing in the field of Rotberg’s current main interest—combating cultural and moral relativism—who are inherently shunned by left-liberal, mainstream publishers, he has published works by such authors as Jamie Glazov, Giulio Meotti, Gustavo Perednik, David Solway, Salim Mansur, Paul Merkley, Stephen Schecter, Pamela Peled, and others.

Review:

sounds a profound and striking note of alarm...Rotberg has done his research and added human emotions and frailties so that readers are both moved by the drama and informed by his global perspective --Cynthia Gasner, Canadian Jewish News

an uncompromising and deeply disturbing political and historical study of the threat to the Jewish people today... the undeniable power of this book ... is that once you read it, you will never again watch the TV news, or read a headline about the Middle East, in the same way. --Luisa D'Amato, The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo

a charming and heartbreaking pro-Israel story --Phyllis Chesler, FrontPageMagazine.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Mantua Books Ltd.
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 097340650X
• ISBN 13: 9780973406504
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196