cover image The Lonely Days Were Sundays

The Lonely Days Were Sundays

Eli N. Evans. University Press of Mississippi, $40 (357pp) ISBN 978-0-87805-627-9

Lively and opinionated, the 31 essays collected here (written over the past 20 years and reprinted from the New York Times , Journal of Southern History , etc.) reflect the author's love of history and pride in his identity as a Jewish Southerner. Born and raised in Durham, N.C., Evans, a former speech writer for President Lyndon Johnson and the author of Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate , here treats a wide variety of subjects, including the involvement of Southern Jews in politics, novels dealing with the Jewish South, the first Jewish Miss North Carolina and the future of Israel. Of particular interest is the inclusion of a diary Evans kept while traveling with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on a 1975 diplomatic trip to the Middle East. Illustrations not seen by PW. (July)