Books by Alan Elsner
Romance Language
Part love story, part historical drama, part coming-of-age novel, Romance Language begins as 17-year-old Petra O'Neill runs off from college and shows up in far-away Romania on a quest to find the father she's never known and uncover the tumultuous events that led to her birth.
As the action swings between 1989 and 2007, we follow Petra through her first love and Liz, Petra's mother, caught at the center of a revolution that has turned the capital into a deadly battlefield.
Based on extensive research and interviews, Romance Language has the ring of historical authenticity. It contains a meticulous recreation of the Romanian revolution as seen through the eyes of two people at the heart of the tumultuous events. Coming from Arcade Publishing, 2009.
The Nazi Hunter
Alan Elsner has 30 years' experience in journalism, covering stories ranging from the September 11, 2001 attacks on America and the crisis in the Middle East to the 2000 Presidential election and the end of the Cold War. Elsner's career has been marked by a passion for justice and truth, unquestioned integrity, and a willingness to confront the powerful, the complacent and the evasive.
In The Nazi Hunter he turns that formidable knowledge and expertise towards a gripping thriller weaving together fierce partisan politics, the search for ex-Nazi war criminals, romance, music and a crazed far-right militia intent on bringing down the government. Coming from Arcade Publishing, 2007.
Gates of Injustice
Gates of Injustice is a compelling exposé of the U.S. prison system: it tells how more than 2 million Americans came to be incarcerated ... what it's really like on the inside ... and how a giant "prison-industrial complex" promotes imprisonment over other solutions.
Elsner takes you inside "supermax" prisons that deny inmates human contact and reveals official corruption and brutality within U.S. jails. You'll also learn how prisons help to spread infectious diseases throughout society ... one of the ways the prison crisis touches you, even if you've never had a brush with the law.
Guarded By Angels
Guarded by Angels is a thrilling story of how three young Polish Jews survived both Hitler and Stalin. It tells of how my father, Eugene Elsner, his younger brother Mark and a cousin were arrested by the Soviets in Lvov in 1940 and sent to brutal Gulag camps in Karelia, hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, where they were put to work cutting down trees. They barely survived the experience.
Set free almost two years later, they spent the next months wandering around the Soviet Union, through the cities of Central Asia, looking for safety. They eventually found shelter in a Cossack village but just six months later were occupied by Nazi forces. Forging their identity papers, the brothers tried to keep one step ahead of the Germans while aiding the resistance.
Articles by Alan Elsner
Alan Elsner and "The Hotel Rwanda."
In 1993, I exposed the hypocrisy of the Clinton administration towards the Rwanda genocide and helped force a change in policy as this excerpt from the Atlantic Monthly, September 2001 makes clear. Later, this exchange was featured in the movie, 'The Hotel Rwanda' as well as an episode of "The West Wing."
Massive attacks destroy World Trade Center
NEW YORK, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Three hijacked planes crashed into major U.S. landmarks on Tuesday, destroying both of New York's mighty twin towers and plunging the Pentagon in Washington into flames in an unprecedented assault on key symbols of U.S. military and financial
power ...
Bush declared president, Gore refused to concede
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - George W. Bush appeared to win Tuesday's presidential election but Democrat Al Gore, who had called the Texas governor to congratulate him, retracted his concession throwing the election into confusion ...
Unearthing the Horror of Belzec
I have been very involved in efforts to build a new monument at the Belzec extermination camp where my grandparents died. I exposed the disgraceful neglect at the site after a visit in 1993, which prompted the beginning of a campaign to build a new, more appropriate memorial. The new memorial was inaugurated in June 2004.
Virginia execution is smooth, clinical, impersonal
JARRATT, Va., Feb 27 (Reuter) - "That was a clean execution. It went very smoothly," one prison official said after the state of Virginia put to death convicted murderer Coleman Wayne Gray by lethal injection on Wednesday night ...
Pope John Paul II and the Jews
Jerusalem, March 26, 2000: Pope John Paul II slowly, haltingly made his way to the Western Wall, the last remaining remnant of the Second Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE. A few feet from the Wall, the cardinals accompanying him stepped away, leaving the Pope to proceed shakily alone. John Paul II bowed his head in silent prayer, touched the ancient stones and crossed himself before placing a note in a crack between the giant slabs ...
Jerusalem - Cauldron of the Conflict
The late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai once wrote that holiness hung in the sky above Jerusalem like industrial pollution over other cities. The air, he said, was ?“filled with prayers and dreams ?… hard to breath.?” He added that in Jerusalem, ?“the right to vote is granted even to the dead.?”
U.S. funeral industry poised for baby boomers
YORK, Pa., Feb 9 (Reuters) - The American funeral, often satirized as ostentatious and decried as needlessly expensive, is poised to reinvent itself as the baby boom generation grows older and begins to confront its final passage ...
Theme weddings all the rage in Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Does your dream wedding include being married in a fake graveyard by the Grim Reaper and spending your first night of married bliss in a mock grave for a bed? If so, Ron Decar is your man ...
PETA Hopes Foot-and-Mouth Strikes in the United States
Norfolk, Virginia ?— While U.S. authorities take precautions to prevent foot-and-mouth from entering the country, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, possibly the world's most influential animal rights organization, openly hopes the disease crosses the Atlantic ...