Slow Fire

Berlin--"East" and "West," day and night--through the 1980s before the Wall came down. In the eyes of a U.S. philosophy student. And Jewish, which makes for moments awkward, poignant, resonant, unspoken, crass, funny, and always lurking.

Most of all, Susan Neiman--later a philosophy professor at Yale and Tel Aviv University, now the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam--can surely write,  as borne out again by her books to follow this debut.  (Her latest, "Moral Clarity," was one of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2008.) Here, we live the Reagan years with her when a city was divided, America the occupier, and the cigarettes not named Salem because it sounds too Jewish.