A Race Apart blurs the distinction between historical fiction and reality. Race prejudice and antisemitism, especially on a world Olympic stage, set the table for the Holocaust and Hitler's Final Solution. Well known or lesser sports and dubious historical figures of the Twentieth Century include the participants of the 4x100 meter Olympic team, those who ran for the American squad in Berlin in August, 1936, or those whom did not compete because they were Jewish. Ghost Runners Robert Rubenstein Ghost Runners is a novel based on real events which give the story the ringing tone of reality as the fictional characters (including well-known Olympic sports figures) face not just sports ambitions, but racism and prejudice which permeates their past, present, and future worlds. Focusing on the Olympic team's American running competitors in 1936, the story winds through Jewish, German, and American encounters on the playing field of sports and prejudice as athletes, coaches, and observers find their lives and careers challenged by shifting social and political tides. Robert Rubenstein builds a captivating story that swaggers with nationalist sentiments, scintillates with new possibilities for achievement and identity, and explores the perceptions and efforts of men like Adolf Eichmann, who "...wanted only to sweep the Jews away." As the Olympic Games become the tertiary playing field of businessmen, financiers, observers, and major players, readers are immersed in a story of American, German, and Jewish encounters which represent the building blocks of a growing prejudice and hatred. Some characters seem destined to effect changes behind the scenes. Such is Joshua, who is "...going to race invisibly. He was going to move everyone along. He was a ghost runner now." As the novel provides hard-hitting scenarios of the athletes who represent the "...glory and the dash men who ran like gods down from Olympus," it excels in a powerful voice that contrasts ethnic perceptions, experiences, and the rise of power in all strata of society and competitive circles. Ghost Runners should be in any library strong in fiction that examines Hitler's Final Solution and its compelling evolution through all levels of life in Europe and America. Ideally, it also will receive discussion and debate in book clubs devoted to stellar works that explore and expose a time when the circles of hate closed around the Jewish people, leaving them with no place to hide and too many reasons to run. Ghost Runners offers an important lesson for modern times, charting the rise of an era in which "Soon, he'd know all the names of the Jews. 'Yes, it was possible not just in Germany. In a little more time, you can begin cataloging all of Europe.'" Therein follows the world—which is why readers need the reminders and insights featured in Ghost Runners to keep the darkness at bay, now more than ever. Diane Donovan California Book Watch The author has spent forty years trying to weave previous 'Ghost Runners' research into the narrative with one broad stroke. He has been on a fool's errand. Like Peleus in his admonition, he dared to believe that he could race with the gods and prevail. At eighty years old, he has seen the dissipation of passion, the slow beat of physical decomposition, the loss of friends, the indifference that comes to fate, and the exhaustion of dreams. But still, he trudges on in his last footrace to create an enduring tale. If he could have one more go, he would ransack the text to delete those dreaded commas and grammatical errors, but that is not meant to be. There are currently 9,485 commas. His grandson tells him not to worry about them. When he is of age, he says, the rules will change again, and nobody will care. Racism and anti-Semitism still are set in the past and the future. History is ever-changing. New revelations supplant the old Still, the starter's gun strikes like a hammer on a gnawing headache. But let it be known. The author came running before he had to re-learn how to walk again. Paradoxically, his aim was to run from the confines of his body  into the realm of the spirit to capture the glory and the shame of a living, breathing history when man was 'wolf to man,' and betrayal created the strongest of enduring emotions.