Belonging
  • Published: 16 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099546689
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $35.00

Belonging

The Story of the Jews 1492–1900

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Oct 2018
Paperback
16 Sep 2014
EBook
12 Oct 2017
EBook
12 Sep 2013
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'Unforgettable…a delicious cacophony of conversations and clamorous arguments echoing across history'
Daily Telegraph

The landmark history of a people, culture and a world.

It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds.

It spans the millennia and the continents – from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear, from the severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in Muslim Spain.

Within these pages, the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris, massed gibbets hang over the streets of medieval London, a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world; candles are lit, chants are sung, mules are packed, ships loaded with spice and gems founder at sea.

And a great story unfolds. Not – as often imagined – of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians.

Which makes the story of the Jews everyone’s story, too.
  • Published: 16 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099546689
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, The American Future, The Face of Britain and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).

His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented more than fifty films for the BBC on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, and The Story of the Jews and is co-presenter of a new landmark series on the history of world art, Civilisations.

portrait photo of Simon Schama

Also by Simon Schama

Art
A History of Britain - Volume 1
The Power of Art
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble
The American Future
The Face of Britain
A History of Britain - Volume 3
See all

Praise for Belonging

Schama has written a proud and personal story of his people, one that will make a good starting point for those interested in one of history’s most fascinating and tragic tales

Josh Glancy, Sunday Times

An exuberant tour de force

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Daily Mail

Schama at his best, a labour of love, as full of memorable incident as a Bellow novel and wittier than a Woody Allen movie

The Times

Inspiring… Schama tells it with panache, weaving facts and anecdotes into a vivid history

Observer

Unforgettable…a delicious cacophony of conversations and clamorous arguments echoing across history

Daily Telegraph

A spirited, immensely enjoyable and wide-ranging account… [expresses] both the triumphs and the tragedies with irrepressible enthusiasm and his customary eloquence

Financial Times

400 pages of hatred and hope. Terrific

William Leith, Evening Standard

Schama is an entertaining and eloquent guide through the triumphs and tragedies

David Bradbury, Daily Mail

Schama at his best – a labour of love, as full of memorable incident as a Bellow novel and wittier than a Woody Allen movie

Daniel Johnson, The Times

A remarkably authoritative and engaging book

Good Book Guide

Few historians write with the energy of Simon Schama. His second volume on the history of the Jews shows that Schama has lost none of his vigour: the mixture of stories about people, ordinary but more extraordinary, witty asides, Schama family reminiscences, schmaltzy views of Jewish life in past times – all this is there

David Abulafia, Standpoint