Some of the happiest times in Paul West’s life were spent as a student at Oxford University in the mid-20th century. It was there that he launched his literary career as a poet. Now a prolific and distinguished author, he has published 22 works of fiction and 14 works of nonfiction, including autobiographies and literary criticism. In his new memoir Oxford Days: An Inclination, West describes the famous institution as a "mellifluous beehive, a whirligig of amateur fascinations." Engaging and insightful, the memoir presents a defining period in the author’s life, a time that grew out of his upbringing by a father who was seriously disabled in World War I and an extraordinarily talented mother who taught music. The piano in their home was in use for as much as 10 hours a day, West remembers. His mother had an exquisite knowledge of grammar, and she gave him a grammar book as soon as he could read.

All this was wonderful preparation for the intellectual challenges Oxford would present. West hardly believed his supervisor John Sparrow when the latter described the value and meaning of the Oxford experience. "At Oxford [Sparrow told him] whatever else you think you are doing, you are unwittingly absorbing something unique and choice a sense of the unfailing caliber of mental things, providing you with indestructible inner resources in after-years. He was right," West writes. "Oxford had, still has, a kind of permanent Zeitgeist, indefinable but unmistakable."

While there, along with budding writers Donald Hall, George Steiner and the poet Elizabeth Jannings, West contributed to a poetry collection that was reviewed in glowing terms in the Times Literary Supplement. West gives us a sense of what makes the university distinctive, from its language, to its religious aspects, to its food and smells. His fond tribute to this venerable institution offers abundant riches to the reader.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

Aside from "holocaust," there is no uglier term to the Jewish people than "blood libel," the historical canard that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for ritualistic purposes. Throughout the ages, anti-Semites have leveled such accusations to justify their evil behavior.

Helmut Walser Smith examines one of the most contentious examples of this ugly phenomenon in <B>The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town</B>.

The case in question involves the murder and mutilation of an 18-year-old boy in the town of Konitz, Germany, at the turn of the century. The boy’s body was found, in several pieces, by a nearby river. (A warning to readers: Smith is extremely graphic in his depictions of the crime.) Because the remains were devoid of blood (religious laws dictate that all blood must be drained in order for meat to be considered kosher), the townspeople resurrected "blood libel" as the explanation and looked for someone who had the knowledge to perpetrate such a heinous crime. Suspicion fell on Adolph Lewy, a Jewish butcher. As the investigation into the young man’s death progressed, more and more people came forth to offer "testimony," or more accurately, their own hare-brained notions of what happened and how. Anti-Semitic journalists arrived to cover the various hearings and trials, fanning the flames of unrest.

The author, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, offers a brief explanation of the "blood libel" concept and the tragic consequences it often held for the Jews of Europe. He portrays the townspeople of Konitz who offered statements against Lewy as being of such low quality (drunkards or "mental defectives") that it’s amazing anyone in a position of authority could take their testimony seriously. Smith does a fascinating job of trying to prove Levy’s innocence and identify a likely culprit. His book may make readers uncomfortable. If so, it has served a valuable purpose.

<I>Ron Kaplan writes from Montclair, New Jersey</I>.

"The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash, disjointed," writes Herman Gollob, author of Me and Shakespeare. "Out of this chaos the editor must bring order—structure, organization, coherence." Now in his early 70s, Gollob is well-known in publishing circles, having served for years as an editor at Little, Brown, Atheneum and Simon & Schuster.

Originally from Texas, he made fortuitous early professional connections that led him into careers as a Hollywood story editor and literary agent. He went on to nurture the talents of writers such as James Clavell, Dan Jenkins, Donald Barthelme and Willie Morris. While his book is, at times, lofty in tone, it is anecdote-laden, rich with gossip and brimming with all things Shakespearean.Gollob, who teaches adult education classes on the Bard at New Jersey’s Caldwell College Lifelong Learning Institute, takes his cue from pertinent Shakespearean quotations, describing his journeys to the Bodleian and Folger Shakespeare libraries, relating his exchanges with students and offering a fair amount of hardcore literary, critical and historical analysis of the Bard’s works and influences.Along the way, he discusses such personal matters as his father’s death from prostate cancer, his mother’s lobotomy and his high regard for his wife, Barbara. He also takes an apparently long-overdue retaliatory swipe at the late actor Lee Strasberg by relating an incident in which Gollob the editor told potential author Strasberg that no one would ever want to read a book as pedantic as the one Strasberg was proposing. It would seem that Strasberg was not as encouraging of Gollob’s early attempts to be an actor as Gollob would have liked.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

What are the odds? Two major publishers release memoirs at the same time in the same year, both of which are authored by men of professional bearing who glory in Shakespeare and teach classes on the subject. The coincidences passing strange are worthy of one of the Bard’s own plays.

“The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash, disjointed,” writes Herman Gollob, author of Me and Shakespeare. “Out of this chaos the editor must bring order structure, organization, coherence.” Now in his early 70s, Gollob is well-known in publishing circles, having served for years as an editor at Little, Brown, Atheneum and Simon &and Schuster. Originally from Texas, he made fortuitous early professional connections that led him into careers as a Hollywood story editor and literary agent. He went on to nurture the talents of writers such as James Clavell, Dan Jenkins, Donald Barthelme and Willie Morris. While his book is, at times, lofty in tone, it is anecdote-laden, rich with gossip and brimming with all things Shakespearean.

Gollob, who teaches adult education classes on the Bard at New Jersey’s Caldwell College Lifelong Learning Institute, takes his cue from pertinent Shakespearean quotations, describing his journeys to the Bodleian and Folger Shakespeare libraries, relating his exchanges with students and offering a fair amount of hardcore literary, critical and historical analysis of the Bard’s works and influences.

Along the way, he discusses such personal matters as his father’s death from prostate cancer, his mother’s lobotomy and his high regard for his wife, Barbara. He also takes an apparently long-overdue retaliatory swipe at the late actor Lee Strasberg by relating an incident in which Gollob the editor told potential author Strasberg that no one would ever want to read a book as pedantic as the one Strasberg was proposing. It would seem that Strasberg was not as encouraging of Gollob’s early attempts to be an actor as Gollob would have liked.

Bob Smith is a man of fewer pretensions than Gollob, and his new memoir Hamlet’s Dresser shows it.”I’ve seen my ordinary name as a promise to be unseen, unheard, unnoticed,” writes Smith. “And for most of my life I’ve honored the contract.” The title of the memoir derives from Smith’s career as wardrobe man at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut, where he rubbed elbows with well-known personalities, including John Houseman, Jessica Tandy and Katharine Hepburn. Nowadays, Smith takes pride in running informal seminars on Shakespeare at senior centers in New York City. With distant parents and a severely retarded sister, Smith turned to the Bard at an early age and found solace in his poetry and his universal, all-encompassing understanding of human frailty. “I think that the more confused you are inside,” Smith says, “the more you need to trust a thing outside of yourself. I was desperate to lean against a thing bigger than me, and it was clear that William Shakespeare understood what it’s like to ache and not know why.” Smith’s young life was tinged with sadness due to his mother’s depression and alcoholism, his father’s aloofness and the love and pain associated with his sister Carolyn, who was eventually institutionalized. His further exposure to Shakespeare through his theatrical work has made Smith a nonacademic expert on the Bard, with an amazing power to recall lengthy passages of dialogue. His book, too, is laced with illuminating quotes from the Bard’s plays, which shed additional connecting light on the painful details of Smith’s upbringing and ongoing personal hardships, including the tragic suicide of an actor-friend. If the growing soul is best watered by tears of adversity, then Smith is a living example of that axiom. Fortunately, he has turned sorrow into a creative outlet for informing and inspiring his weekly audience of aging men and women, who too are learning of Shakespeare’s curative and comforting powers. Martin Brady writes from Nashville.