RaveThe Financial TimesSimon Schama’s latest book, Belonging: The Story of the Jews, betrays no trace of that transcendent force. His volume, the second of two that cover 3,000 years of history, is a decidedly earthly chronicle of the Jews’ innumerable encounters with Gentile hosts... a magisterial account that grasps the global sweep of Jewish history through an intense, micro-historical inquiry into the local settings in which Jews made their homes ... product of a world-class historian at the peak of his creative powers ...encounters there vivid portraits of fascinating Sephardi figures... At work here is a great historian’s fertile and even artistic imagination, drawing out from and filling in where the documentary record begins and ends ...with astonishing range and extraordinary synthesising powers, Schama captures the drama of Jewish history.
