Joseph Berger

Joseph Berger was a New York Times reporter, columnist, and editor for over 30 years, writing about education, religion, and the vivid kaleidoscope that is New York City as well chronicling many of the events that have shaken Israel and the Middle East. He retired in December 2014. He has also taught urban affairs at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College.

He is the author of five books. The latest, Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, is the first full-scale biography of the remarkable writer, teacher, and Nobel Prize-winning spokesman for victims of the Holocaust and of genocides everywhere. His previous book, The Pious Ones; The World of Hasidim and their Battles with America, was published by HarperCollins in Fall 2014.

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Upcoming Appearances

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Berger previously wrote The World in a City: Traveling the Globe through the Neighborhoods of the New New York, an intimate insider’s tour of a New York City transformed by immigration, gentrification and other forces. Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust is a memoir about his family’s experience as refugees in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. It was chosen as a notable book of the year by The New York Times, which called it “an extraordinary memoir” and was praised by Elie Wiesel as a “powerful and sweetly melancholic memoir, brilliantly written.”

His first book was The Young Scientists: America’s Future and the Winning of the Westinghouse, an upbeat portrait of America’s best schools and the way they educate the nation’s most scientifically talented youngsters. The book inspired many high schools to launch programs that train students to do research, not just learn basic science.

Berger is a prolific speaker about immigration, New York City, the Holocaust, Israel and themes in education. He has appeared in over 200 venues including the 92d Street Y, Barnes & Noble, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Museum of the City of New York, numerous book fairs and an array of colleges around the country, including Princeton, Columbia, Vassar, Barnard, Sarah Lawrence, and New York University. He has also run two speakers series: at the 92d Street Y where he has interviewed Edward Koch, Mort Zuckerman, Cynthia Ozick, and Jeffrey Toobin; and at the Mid-Westchester Jewish Community Center, where he has interviewed Martin Fletcher and Gary Rosenblatt.

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Review for Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence – “an intimate sympathetic biography . . . an indispensable touchstone.” by Julia Klein, The Forward. [..Read more..]