Mark Kurlansky is the author of Salt; The Basque History of the World; the New York Times bestseller Cod- A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World; A Continent of Islands- Searching for the Carribean Destiny; and a collection of stories, The White Man in the Tree. He is a regular contributor to the Partisan Review. He has also written for the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. He lives in New York City.
This book is a fascinating review of the changing life of Jews and Judaism and Europeans in general since the Second World War. -Rocky Mountain News Kurlansky does an astonishingly informative job here, covering a vast array of individuals and communities throughout Europe, chronicling the economic, political, and cultural trends that reshaped and often played havoc with their lives and destinies. His descriptions of life in Antwerp, Paris, Budapest, and Amsterdam are superb, while his chapters on Poland are among the best I've read. -SUSAN MIRON Forward A richly descriptive and insightful survey of post-Holocaust European Jewry . . . With a novelist's eye for irony and description, [Kurlansky] offers many moments of transcendence and humor; entertaining culture clashes between communists and capitalists, religious and secular, Zionists and diasporists. . . . A lively, penetrating follow-up to Holocaust readings that speaks volumes about the resiliency of the Jewish people. -Kirkus Reviews Kurlansky's collection of case histories unfolds like a novel. -The Jewish Advocate