by Simon Schama
First published 2014
Simon Schama chronicles three thousand years of Jewish history in this richly illustrated cultural study that accompanies the PBS and BBC television series. He begins with ancient tribal origins and follows the Jewish experience through centuries of diaspora, persecution, and cultural flowering until Columbus reaches the New World in 1492. Schama takes readers from a forgotten Jewish kingdom in southern Arabia to Syrian synagogues adorned with brilliant murals, from Roman catacombs where Jewish dead rest among palm groves to the burning of the Talmud in Parisian streets. His narrative captures both tragedy and triumph: the gibbets of medieval London, the love poetry of Jewish wine drinkers in Muslim Spain, the work of a Majorcan artist redrawing maps of the world. Rather than presenting Jews as a people set apart, Schama reveals how deeply they shaped and were shaped by surrounding cultures, from Egyptians and Greeks to Arabs and Christians. This interconnected history becomes a universal story of human endurance, creativity under oppression, and the persistence of joy amid suffering.
Genres: biography, history, non-fiction, academic, cultural-studies, jewish
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: interconnected-history, persistence-of-joy
Setting: Arabia, Egypt, Greece, London, Majorca, Parisian, Rome, Spain, Syria
Period: 1492, Ancient, Medieval, Diaspora
512 pages · Hardcover · Ecco