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|  | | Hobgoblins
Frustrated by political obstacles to their goals of economic world domination, a group of unscrupulous American industrial tycoons secretly finance a new political party, the American Freedom Party (AFP).
The conspirators plan to use the AFP to subvert the Constitution and further their monopolistic national and global agendas. What they fail to realize is that John Gerard, their charismatic presidential candidate, plans to double-cross them and, like Hitler, become a dictator. These conspiratorial financiers create international economic, terrorist and political crises that leave the Republican and Democratic parties hopelessly divided and ineffectual. With behind-the-scenes manipulations, AFP enables their candidate to resolve these crises and gain the support of the frightened citizens of the United States.
Only three people can thwart these plots: Dr. Ritter, a psychologist who once treated the future presidential candidate, Solomon Weissman, a muckraking journalist and a third person whose identity is revealed in the climax. During hypnosis sessions, the psychopathic Gerard unknowingly reveals his plans to Dr. Ritter. Meanwhile, Weissman penetrates the financiers' New Millennium Consortium and learns of their plans. In his climb to power, Gerard arranges for the disappearance of his opponents and those familiar with his past. But the one adversary he doesn't anticipate is the only man who knows the secret behind the hobgoblin nightmares that haunt both Dr. Ritter and himself.
| |  | | Land of Dreams
Land of Dreams is a coming-of-age novel about a ten-year-old boy in 1938-1939, the year America was struggling out of the Depression and Europe was staggering into war. Al, the adult narrator, relives that fateful year. He is witness to the struggles of his immigrant family: his father risks his life to oust the gangsters from the painters union; his mother tries to smuggle her sister's family out of Soviet Russia. Al resonates to his grandfather's Orthodoxy and is challenged by his older brother's scientism. He has other conflicts as well: being accepted by his Irish-American fourth grade teacher, dealing with the class bully who dislikes him because he's fat and Jewish, escaping his over-protective mother and trying to make sense of his family and the world. While he daydreams about Native Americans in nearby Crotona Park, he meets an African-American classmate whose grandfather is an Apache survivor of his tribe's 1890 Florida imprisonment.
Besides the serious themes, we witness the mishaps at the Christmas and Chanukah plays and the Bronx Bombers winning the 1938 World Series. In his struggles, Al enlists the help of the 1930's comic strip and radio heroes (e.g., Superman, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers), as well as Biblical characters (e.g., Noah, Abraham, Moses and God) to confront formidable enemies: the school bully, the immigration police, Adolph Hitler, Death and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Comments from editors include, "evocative...interesting, admirable," "the author captured the protagonist's point of view with sensitivity and warmth," "a warm, lively picture of family life."
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