About the Author

Paul Johnson is a historian whose work ranges over the millennia and the whole gamut of human activities. He regularly writes book reviews for several UK magazines and newspapers, such as the Literary Review and The Spectator, and he lectures around the world. He lives in London, England.

Reviews

"A tour de force. . . . A remarkable achievement." -- New York Times Book Review"An absorbing, provocative, well-written, often moving book, an insightful and impassioned blend of history and myth, story and interpretation." -- Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor"A marvelous book. . . . This is history: richly textured, provocative and wise." -- Plain Dealer"Johnson has put together in one volume an extraordinary amount of useful information, and talks realistically about the Jews of the last four centuries, to which his devotes more than half of his book." -- New York Review of Books"A powerful reminder of Jewish achievement throughout the ages." -- Martin Gilbert, Commentary"Johnson brings to his subject a vitality that can't be matched in any of the professional one-volume histories. . . . His writing is dramatic without histrionics, graphic without being highly colored." -- John Gross, New York Times

Less a seminal contribution than a distillation of a wide range of sources, this history of the Jews focuses on their four-millennia interplay with, and adaption to, other, often hostile, civilizationsa ``world history seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim.'' Weaving biblical and archeological data, Johnson (Modern Times and A History of Christianity is particularly deft at placing the patriarchs and early Israelites (the Bronze Age through the destruction of the First Temple) in their historical context. His dense, somewhat arbitrary, capsule extols Judaic rational scholarshipwhich contributed to ethical monotheism and the 18th-century economic system, in turnand denigrates mystic kabbalah``heresy of the most pernicious kind.'' Although Johnson, who seeks to acknowledge ``the magnitude of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism,'' traces ``an inherent conflict'' between the religion and the state of Israel through the various ages, the work is incontrovertibly sympathetic to Zionism. BOMC and QPBC featured alternates; author tour. (April)