Martin Goodman

Environmentally, our planet lacks the laws to keep it safe, and those laws we do have are feebly enforced. Every new year is the hottest in human history, while forests, reefs, ice, tundra, and species are disappearing forever. It is easy to lose all hope. Who will stop the planet from committing ecological suicide? The UN? Governments? Activists? Corporations? Engineers?...

A definitive study (Financial Times) of Judaism, from its origins to the present. Judaism is by some distance the oldest of the three Abrahamic religions and, despite the extraordinarily varied forms it has taken and diverse beliefs it has contained over three millennia, it has been generally understood by both Jews and gentiles as a single entity. There have been...

A vivid account of the political triumphs and domestic tragedies of the Jewish king Herod the Great during the turmoil of the Roman revolution Herod the Great (73–4 BCE) was a phenomenally energetic ruler who took advantage of the chaos of the Roman revolution to establish himself as a major figure in a changing Roman world and transform the landscape...

An essential introduction to Josephus's momentous war narrative, The Jewish War is Josephus's superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin Goodman describes the life of this book, from its composition in Greek for a Roman readership to the myriad ways...

How much can one love a tree? Rajasthan, in northern India, is home to the Bishnoi, a desert people whose religion is built around nature and wildlife conservation. They are renowned for the extreme lengths they go to defend nature: Bishnoi have died to defend trees from loggers and in pursuit of illegal poachers. In My Head For A Tree,...

The Second World War is over, but young Tomas learns that Europe's wounds have not yet healed. "You come to see [Tomas] is conserving himself deliberately against the old suffering, the tired old guilt of the adults... Simplicity is a great virtue, in novels as elsewhere. After all, it can only be produced from sincerity." - Penelope Fitzgerald It's 1966....

The Cellist of Dachau is an acclaimed and 'masterful' novel of the Holocaust – the legacy that haunts us, and the music that binds us. In 1938, Otto Schalmik, a 19-year-old musician from a Jewish family in Vienna, is arrested by Nazi police. Transported to Dachau, he is summoned to the home of the camp's Adjutant, who forces him to...

Joyful, wild, gay stories from award-winning Martin Goodman. Meet his cast of characters: New York designer Arnold, whose lovely life blossoms from age 7. We watch him grow famous then learn from the bumps of life. A young priest who leaves uptight England to lose and find himself in Turkey. Queenie, scarred from her time as a beautiful boy, meets...