The events of 9/11 presented the financial industry with the greatest operational crisis in its history. Key officials were killed; others could not be located. Primary and backup sites were unavailable or inadequate. Massive amounts of critical data were lost, and there was a crushing inability to communicate, locate or verify information. It was not known for a time which firms could participate in the markets and to what degree, nor was it clear to what extent certain markets had been damaged and when they should reopen. Nor could the human impact of the 9/11 events be divorced from the...

"BEla's Letters" is an historical fiction novel based on the life of BEla Ingber. BEla was born before the onset of WWI in MunkAcs, a small city nestled in the Carpathian Mountains that belonged to the democratic nation of Czechoslovakia until being occupied by fascist Hungary and then by German forces during WW II. BEla and his family were part of an extraordinary Jewish community, known for both its religious fervor and its Zionist movement, that had thrived for centuries until being eradicated less than a year before the end of the war.

The book spans the years from...