HOWARD M. SACHAR

A modern classic--the most authoritative and readable history of the Jewish state ever published--this massively updated volume carries the full story of Israel, from its early 19th-century ideological beginnings to the most recent peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians. 34 maps.

When this encyclopedic history of the Jews was first published in 1958, it was hailed as one of the great works of its kind, a study that not only chronicled an assailed and enduring people, but assessed its astonishing impact on the modern world. Now this scholarly and comprehensive book has been massively revised and updated by its author, a professor of modern history at the George Washington University and one of the most respected authorities on the lives and times of the Jewish people.The new edition casts additional light on the milestones of the Jewish saga from the eighteenth century to the close of the twentieth: the Jews emergence from the ghetto and into the heart of Western society, the debate between the voices of tradition, assimilation, and Zionism; virtual destruction during the Holocaust; and troubled rebirth in Israel. Here, too, are evocative portraits of todays disapora, from the Jews of America to the embattled communities of the former Soviet Union and the Third World.

"A remarkable feat--clear, compelling and accessible--. Critical background for any appreciation of the Jewish state."--The New York Times Book ReviewWith his characteristic grace and lucidity, Howard M. Sachar, renowned author of thirteen earlier books on Middle Eastern and Jewish history, brings to life the complex and dramatic story of the friendships and fallings-out between Israel and the various European powers over the last half-century.Dr. Sachar chronicles the always uneasy relationship between Israel and Great Britain; its early love-affair and nasty break-up with France; the shifting Soviet policies toward Israel; and the unlikely emergence of Germany as the new nations chief European benefactor. A master of historical narrative, Sachar once again enlightens us with fine scholarship, insightful analysis, and an unerring knowledge of human--and national--motivations.

By the end of World War I, in November 1918, Europes old authoritarian empires had fallen, and new and seemingly democratic governments were rising from the debris. As successor states found their place on the map, many hoped that a more liberal Europe would emerge. But this post-war idealism all too quickly collapsed under the political and economic pressures of the 1920s and 30s. Howard M. Sachar chronicles this visionary and tempestuous era by examining the fortunes of Europes Jewish minority, a group whose precarious status made them particularly sensitive to changes in the social order. Writing with characteristic lucidity and verve, Sachar spotlights an array of charismatic leadersfrom Hungarian Communist Bela Kun to Germanys Rosa Luxemburg, Frances Socialist Prime Minister Leon Blum and Austrias Sigmund Freudwhose collective experience foretold significant democratic failures long before the Nazi rise to power. In the richness of its human tapestry and the acuity of its social insights, Dreamland masterfully expands our understanding of a watershed era in modern history.

Farewell Espana transcends conventional historical narrative. With the lucidity and verve that have characterized his numerous earlier volumes, Howard Sachar breathes life into the leading dramatis personae of the Sephardic world: the royal counselors Samuel ibn Nagrela and Joseph Nasi, the poets Solomon ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi, the philosophers Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza, the statesmen Benjamin Disraeli and Pierre Mendes-France, the warriors Moshe Pijade and David Elazar, the fabulous charlatans David Reuveni and Shabbatai Zvi.In its breadth and richness of texture, Sachars account sweeps to the contemporary era of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco, poignantly traces the fate of Balkan Sephardic communities during the Holocaust -- and their revival in the Land and State of Israel. Not least of all, the author offers a tactile dimension of immediacy in his personal encounters with the storied venues and current personalities of the Sephardic world. Farewell Espana is a window opened on a glowing civilization once all but extinguished, and now flickering again into renewed creativity.

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.

The distinguished historian of the Jewish people, Howard M. Sachar, gives us a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of the achievements and traumas of the Jews over the last four hundred years. Tracking their fate from Western Europes age of mercantilism in the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet and post-imperialist Islamic upheavals of the twenty-first century, Sachar applies his renowned narrative skill to the central role of the Jews in many of the most impressive achievements of modern civilization: whether in the rise of economic capitalism or of political socialism; in the discoveries of theoretical physics or applied medicine; in higher literary criticism or mass communication and popular entertainment. As his account unfolds and moves from epoch to epoch, from continent to continent, from Europe to the Americas and the Middle East, Sachar evaluates communities that, until lately, have been underestimated in the perspective of Jewish and world historyamong them, Jews of Sephardic provenance, of the Moslem regions, and of Africa. By the same token, Sachar applies a masters hand in describing and deciphering the Jews unique exposure and functional usefulness to totalitarian movementsfascist, Nazi, and Stalinist. In the process, he shines an unsparing light on the often widely dissimilar behavior of separate European peoples, and on separate Jewish populations, during the Holocaust.A distillation of the authors lifetime of scholarly research and teaching experience, A History of the Jews in the Modern World provides a source of unsurpassed intellectual richness for university students and educated laypersons alike.

First published in 1976, Howard M. Sachars A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Timewas regarded one of the most valuable works available detailing the history of this still relatively young country. Decades later, readers can again be immersed in this monumental work. The second edition of this volume covers topics such as the first of the Aliyahs in the 1880s; the rise of Jewish nationalism; the beginning of the political Zionist movement and, later, how the movement changed after Theodor Herzl; the Balfour Declaration; the factors that led to the Arab-Jewish confrontation; Palestine and its role both during the Second World War and after; the war of independence and the many wars that followed it over the next few decades; and the development of the Israeli republic and the many challenges it faced, both domestic and foreign, and still faces today.This is a truly enriching and exhaustive history of a nation that holds claim to one of the most complicated and controversial histories in the world.