The Story of the Jews Volume One

An energetic cascade of prose and erudition, rife with pointillist detail and witty colloquialisms... --Chicago Tribune, Printers Row In his brilliant new history of the Jews, the unconventional scholar somehow manages to be simultaneously sentimental and subversive, consensual and contrarian - and we readers are the beneficiaries. --Haaretz (English edition) The story that Schama tells is wide-ranging, well documented, delightful, amusing, personal, and inspring... --New York Review of Books Reading Schama is like sitting across from the world's most dazzling dinner party guest... --Seattle Times A multifaceted story artfully woven by an expert historian. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Award-winning Columbia University historian Schama . . . brings to bear his gift for synthesizing mountains of information into a well-crafted, accessible narrative in this impressive volume that spans nearly 2,500 years and serves as a companion volume to a PBS series. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Schama has written an unconventional but masterful and deeply felt history of his people... --Booklist (starred review) Mr. Schama's The Story of the Jews is exemplary popular history. It's engaged, literate, alert to recent scholarship and, at moments, winningly personal. --New York Times Mr. Schama's history flashes by with entertaining velocity... --Wall Street Journal Schama is a historian of prodigious and varied gifts. He can take a specific subject and drill deep; he can take a wide-angled view of many countries over long periods of time. He does both in this excellent first volume... Revealing and moving. --San Francisco Chronicle Schama writes history from below, and from the middle and other unexpected angles, resurrecting the unrecorded and long-forgotten, and analyzing the social and cultural forces that shaped his subjects' lives... [he] has pulled it off with opinionated flair and literary grace. --New York Times Book Review Stirring and fascinating --Los Angeles Times