Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John Kotter

John Kotter (of Harvard Business School fame) tells the "tale of a colony of Antarctic penguins facing danger-inspired, perhaps, by today's real-life global warming crisis (or, perhaps, by March of the Penguins' box office). Under the leadership of one particularly astute bird, a small team of penguins with varied personalities and leadership skills implement a thoughtful plan for coaxing the other birds in their colony through a time of necessary but wrenching change. The logic of Kotter's fictional framework is wobbly at times-his characters live and act very much like real penguins except that one carries a briefcase and another ("the Professor") cites articles from scholarly journals-and the whimsical tone will not be to everyone's taste. However, this light, quick read should fulfill its intended purpose: to serve as a springboard for group discussions about corporate culture, group dynamics and the challenges of change." from Amazon.com:

The Dybbuk by S. Ansky

Book Description from Amazon.com:

In The Dybbuk, a drama of mystical passion and demonic possession, S. Ansky (1863-1920) brings together the saga of his own youthful rebellion against religious authority, his abiding faith in the power of the simple folk, his utopian struggle for equality, and his newfound commitment to the Jewish people. Anksy had just returned from an epoch-making ethnographic expedition through the Yiddish heartland of Eastern Europe, and what he found in the towns and townlets of the Ukraine was a religious civilization that mediated the living and the dead, the strong and the weak, the natural and the supernatural.

In his introduction to this volume, David G. Roskies reveals that Ansky's return to Mother Russia was accompanied by a profound renegotiation with his hasidic heritage, the Yiddish language, and the Jewish historical imagination. The book also contains little-known works of autobiographical and fantastical prose fiction, as well as an excerpt from The Destruction of Galacia, Ansky's four-volume chronicle of the Eastern Front in the First World War.

Satan in Goray by Issac Bashevis Singer

Amazon.com review by Mark D Burgh "Music, Writing, Art, Film, Hist... (Fort Smith, AR United States) - See all my reviews

Consider that I.B. Singer wrote Satan in Goray at the age of 26 or so, and the impressiveness of this work becomes all the more clear. Few people of that age, or any age could evoke an historical era with such force or create a fractured narrative of such power. The world of religious conflict, superstition, and messianiac hysteria is Singer's main interest, subjects he would pursue for the rest of his life. Satan in Goray is a strong beginning, a prophetic book (written in the early 1930's) of a trapped people on the edge of a disaster.
The book takes place as the Jews of Gory attempt to recover from the Chelmelnicki massacres of the 1640's (the worst disaster for the Jews between the Crusades and the Holocaust). The Jews of Poland believe that, as Christian would say, the End Times are here, and expect the messiah to arrive. Shabbati Shevi appears on the scene, claiming to be the messiah. Many Jews fall under his sway, but the Rabbi of Goray resists and this further wracks the town. As these political and social disasters are played out, a young orphan, Rechele, who is insane, becomes the center of interest of the town, as she is unmarried. When a holy man, Itche Mates, arrives in Goray, he marries the unfortuate Rechele, who proceeds to be posessed by Satan and do things that make Linda Blair in the Excorsist look amateur.

The novel itself has some problems; it's birth as a serial leaves it episodic. One has the sense of threads stopping and starting without reason, and there really is not what could be called a plot. However, Singer's rich language, his pinpoint descriptions of people, places, and religious factions are stunning. Reading his work is an education.

Satan in Goray is a look into the hearts of Polish Jews right before World War II. The sense of helpless claustrophobia is appalling, the whiff of death overwhelming here. Satan was not just in Goray, and Singer knew it.