"Award-winning Columbia University historian Schama . brings to bear his gift for synthesizing mountains of information into a well-crafted, accessible narrative in this impressive volume that spans nearly 2,500 years and serves as a companion volume to a PBS series." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A multifaceted story artfully woven by an expert historian." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Schama has written an unconventional but masterful and deeply felt history of his people." -- Booklist (starred review) "Mr. Schama's The Story of the Jews is exemplary popular history. It's engaged, literate, alert to recent scholarship and, at moments, winningly personal." -- New York Times "In his brilliant new history of the Jews, the unconventional scholar somehow manages to be simultaneously sentimental and subversive, consensual and contrarian - and we readers are the beneficiaries.

" -- Haaretz (English edition) "Mr. Schama's history flashes by with entertaining velocity." -- Wall Street Journal "An energetic cascade of prose and erudition, rife with pointillist detail and witty colloquialisms." -- Chicago Tribune, Printers Row "Schama writes history from below, and from the middle and other unexpected angles, resurrecting the unrecorded and long-forgotten, and analyzing the social and cultural forces that shaped his subjects' lives. [he] has pulled it off with opinionated flair and literary grace." -- New York Times Book Review "Stirring and fascinating" -- Los Angeles Times "Schama is a historian of prodigious and varied gifts. He can take a specific subject and drill deep; he can take a wide-angled view of many countries over long periods of time. He does both in this excellent first volume.

Revealing and moving." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Reading Schama is like sitting across from the world's most dazzling dinner party guest." -- Seattle Times "The story that Schama tells is wide-ranging, well documented, delightful, amusing, personal, and inspring." -- New York Review of Books.