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laurenscholle's review
5.0
It reminded me over and over of how much I love Squirrel Hill and how special of a place it is. It was incredibly informative.
rockcommander's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
4.0
this book is engrossing and i was very interested because i live 10 minutes from SH. the history and the neighborhood are fascinating and i think the author overall did a good job. however. his insistence on using gendered pronouns is clunky, strange, and embarassing and comes off as intentionally transphobic. furthermore he features romanticized views of israel and dismisses anti-zionist groups as “extreme” - while israel is not a focus of the book, it comes up in talking about people’s experiences and it’s clear that the author is pro-israel, which is unfortunate, to say the least.
i think he did a good job focusing on the community & survivors & victims families, and including a breadth of experiences and opinions in the community. but his coastal elite white cis man positionality was deeply annoying to me at times. also this book is very sad obviously
i think he did a good job focusing on the community & survivors & victims families, and including a breadth of experiences and opinions in the community. but his coastal elite white cis man positionality was deeply annoying to me at times. also this book is very sad obviously
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence and Antisemitism
sjgrodsky's review
5.0
I somehow didn’t include this as “read” when I did read it, maybe some time during the summer of 2022?
Excellent book. Made me wish we’d included a walk around the Squirrel Hill neighborhood when Mahesh and I visited Pittsburgh, several years ago now.
Excellent book. Made me wish we’d included a walk around the Squirrel Hill neighborhood when Mahesh and I visited Pittsburgh, several years ago now.
chicagobob's review
5.0
Author does a great job telling us about the background and aftermath of the Tree of Life mass shooting, and the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He also does a great job reading it, not surprising, since he's a major (Jewish) podcaster.
ben3845's review
5.0
I picked up this book at a bookstore in Chicago and wanted to learn more both given my Jewish family history and that I only live a few miles from Squirrel Hill now. This is the first book I’ve read about gun violence and given the book’s subject matter it may not be for everyone. Oppenheimer does detail how the event unfolded and the traumatic impact that resulted. But he also tells an important, inspiring, frustrating, and enlightening story of the tragedy’s impact on this very specific Squirrel Hill community. It’s a story about neighbors that stepped up to help, strangers that made a difference and strangers that bogged the community down, and the resilient Jewish community of Squirrel Hill which is struggling to support small and aging congregations that were impacted by the shootings. I appreciate that the book does not place very much emphasis on the shooter. This book is a great read for anyone who wants to read about the power of communities, local politics and current day Judaism in the U.S., or the impact and local response to gun violence.
readers_block's review
4.0
An interesting, insightful news about the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh.
This book focuses primarily on the aftermath of the shooting, not the day itself. It tells of how a Jewish community rallied and struggled in the wake of the tragedy, focusing on a different element in each chapter.
My one qualm is that I wish the author would have done more to display different opinions here. There are very clearly many people in the community and victim's families who had different opinions about gun control, etc. The author's own opinion on things like that was evident through what he choose to discuss in depth and how he treated cases (like an outlier, or like the common belief.)
I did learn a lot about Judaism throughout this and it was written in a very interesting way.
This book focuses primarily on the aftermath of the shooting, not the day itself. It tells of how a Jewish community rallied and struggled in the wake of the tragedy, focusing on a different element in each chapter.
My one qualm is that I wish the author would have done more to display different opinions here. There are very clearly many people in the community and victim's families who had different opinions about gun control, etc. The author's own opinion on things like that was evident through what he choose to discuss in depth and how he treated cases (like an outlier, or like the common belief.)
I did learn a lot about Judaism throughout this and it was written in a very interesting way.
esburns18's review
3.0
"Squirrel Hill" was a decent book. I thought that it would focus more on the growing tides of anti-Semitism in America, rather than the Squirrel Hill neighborhood itself. Still, Oppenheimer did a great job documenting the community's response. Many books about incidents of violence tend to focus on the crime, but Oppenheimer focused on what happened after the shooting to Squirrel Hill Jews and the greater Pittsburgh area.
This book might be a little bit boring, however, for people who don't have a direct interest in the Squirrel Hill community itself. There were a few segments where the book seemed to move by languidly, making it hard to read even a chapter in one sitting.
Regardless, anyone interested in Jewish communities and anti-Semitism should read "Squirrel Hill".
This book might be a little bit boring, however, for people who don't have a direct interest in the Squirrel Hill community itself. There were a few segments where the book seemed to move by languidly, making it hard to read even a chapter in one sitting.
Regardless, anyone interested in Jewish communities and anti-Semitism should read "Squirrel Hill".
sawyergolden's review
5.0
Two things I have learned since I came to college at Pitt is that I love the city of Pittsburgh, and I love reading anthropological work. Dorky and confusing as I feel it is, I think that anthropology and the work it creates gives people the best insights into how certain communities and groups operate, and the ethical lines along which to conduct anthropological work are not super defined, making for an interesting moral argument. I am not sure whether or not Mark Oppenheimer intended for this book to be anthropological or not, but it is the most humane and respectful story of a community recovering from immense tragedy I have ever read. The story focuses primarily on Squirrel Hill and the Jewish community in Pittsburgh and doesn’t glorify the violence of the event or the man who committed it, which I feel is so important when creating a written work centered around something so tragic. I learned way more about the events of October 27th, Pittsburgh, and Judaism than I thought I would, and I have a new appreciation for the city that I have made my transplanted home. A must-read by any measure.