War Bonds (Paperback or Softback)

In War Bonds, Jack Goldman unspools a vivid, tender, and often humorous portrait of a Depression-era Jewish-American boyhood shaped by the competing energies of tradition, rebellion, assim- ilation, and war. With a keen storyteller’s eye, he recounts life among a spirited cast of characters: a tap-dancing father dodging Orthodox expectations, a bar mitzvah faked for family pride, im- migrant grandparents clinging to the old ways, and a Los Angeles childhood that veers from near tragedy to unexpected grace.
Goldman’s coming-of-age spans the Bronx delicatessens of his youth to the sun-drenched promise of wartime California. Through intimate recollections—both painful and sweet—he captures the strains of poverty, antisemitism, generational conflict, and the enduring power of family improvisation and resilience.
From dice games and candy bribes to jazz saxophone lessons and Christmas trees in Jewish homes, War Bonds weaves memory, history, and identity into a deeply personal narrative of survival and belonging. More than a memoir, it is a lyrical meditation on how bonds—between father and son, past and present, war and peace—shape the self. This is a soulful, richly detailed story of growing up American, Jewish, and fiercely human in the 20th century.

Born 1934 in Bronx, NY, Jack Goldman graduated from UCLA, lived on an Israeli kibbutz, worked in Basel, Switzerland, then came to Cornell graduate school in 1968 on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. Active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, Goldman started the Glad Day Press and the Dateline Ithaca weekly newsletter. In 1980, he opened The Bookery, a used and antiquarian bookstore. His daughter was born in 1986; his son Dan passed away in 2013. Jack retired in 2020 to master the art of chess, and to write poetry, stories, and his memoir, War Bonds.