"The story of these refugees ha finally found its singular and single voice: it is that of Anthony Heilbut, himself the son of exiles.His book turns into something more than a panorama about foreigner: it is a way of revealing to American themselves what their country really is like." --Ariel Dorfman, The Washington Post "Insightful, valuable and stimulating .For some readers, especially the children of generations of emigres, the book will provide a background to their most basic intellectual assumptions." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times "Anthony Heilbut has exercised impressive scholarship, and even a touch of poetry, to get to the heart of this diaspora." --Time "From one page to the next, the book transcends its stated purpose of providing a link between the history of the German-Jewish immigrants and their staggering cultural achievements to acquire the dimensions of that mysterious reality which even a Bresson cannot hope to define: a work of art." --Marcel Ophuls, American Film Magazine "I am struck by the rich, dense, solid quality of the work. It never falls into the anecdotal (which would have tempted a lesser historian) and, without sacrificing the individual and the individual groups, arrives nonetheless at an overall view of the drama of exile.

"--Marguerite Yourcenar.