Synopses & Reviews
Spanning 350 years of Jewish experience in this country, A History of the Jews in America is an essential chronicle by the author of The Course of Modern Jewish History.
With impressive scholarship and a riveting sense of detail, Howard M. Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.
Review
"Although this vast, sprawling book (more than 1,000 pages) presents itself as a history of the Jews in America, it is, in fact, primarily a history of the Jews in America in the 20th century. There is only a brief, briskly-paced account of the Jews in the previous centuries in the first 200 pages that brings us to the main topic. This work is less a sustained history (or 'saga,' as it is called on the dusrjacket) than a sort of highly readable encyclopedia of topics in the social, political, intellectual, and cultural life of American Jews in this century. Fortunately, both the table of contents and index are detailed and useful, and the reader can quickly find entries ranging from the Yiddish Press to Woody Alien, Henry Kissinger, and Leonard Bernstein, to the recently arrived Russian Jews, and much more." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 937-1010) and index.