A history of the Jewish Labor Bund, Here Where We Live Is Our Country plots the arc of the organization from the tsarist Pale of Settlement, to interwar Poland, into war-torn Warsaw and somehow, barely, out again. Crabapple writes in her own voice and interweaves family history with the wider historical scene. The book’s chapters have no citations or footnotes — they’re all relegated to endnotes indexed on page numbers and short phrases — which helps the book read more like a novel while specific facts are there to look up if you’re so inclined.

The Bund represented a point on the political spectrum that has very little representation in the postwar United States. The book is bathed in Bundist principles and ideology, but it isn’t “ideological” in the partisan sense. It reprimands fascists and communists alike. The Bund itself stuck to its principles throughout its existence at the expense of sharing power and influence that might have changed the course of history. Did people in those moments make the right decision? It doesn’t seem like those who compromised ended up any better, and Crabapple’s postscript meditates more on the “why” of it all.

Among many other firsts, this book was my first more rigorous introduction to the history of World War II. Those chapters of the book left me extremely emotional, but I’m glad to have read them.