Synopses & Reviews
The most comprehensive, up-to-date and readable history of the Jews in the English language. Cantor focuses on the way Jewish identity has been created, perpetuated, and shaped through interaction with other societies from biblical times to the present to become a unique and tenacious culture with its own mind-set and patterns of behavior.
Synopsis
Written for lay readers and introductory college courses, The Sacred Chain focuses on how a Jewish identity and consciousness were created and shaped through thousands of years of complex development. As controversial as it is accessible, this is a thoroughly comprehensive overview of Judaism through the ages.
From the Biblical account of Jewish origins to the Jewish Reformation, from the rise of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi cultures to Jewish contributions to the arts and sciences, and from the tragedy of the Holocaust to the creation of Israel, Cantor not only recounts the remarkable history of the Jewish people, but also offers a new paradigm for its interpretation.
Norman F. Cantor (1929 - 2004) was professor emeritus of history, sociology, and comparative literature at New York University. His many books include the New York Times bestseller In the Wake of the Plague, Antiquity, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, Medieval Lives, and Inventing the Middle Ages, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
"Polemical and stimulating ... an iconoclastic assault on contemporary Jewish self-imagery based on many of the latest academic studies." -- New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
An important, controversial account of the history of the Jewish people that is both scholarly and compulsively readable.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 439-459) and index.
About the Author
Norman F. Cantor was Emeritus Professor of History, Sociology, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His academic honors include appointments as a Rhodes Scholar, Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow at Princeton University, and Fulbright Professor at Tel Aviv University. His many books include the New York Timesbestseller In the Wake of the Plague, Antiquity, Inventing the Middle Ages, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Civilization of the Middle Ages, the most widely read narrative of the Middle Ages in the English language.