"A highly enjoyable and surprisingly positive account of how Jewish culture helped shape European history and vice versa." -The Sunday Telegraph "An outstanding survey. . . . Kriwaczek tracks the origins, flowering, and destruction of this unique, vibrant, and tenacious culture with a fine mixture of pride, regret, and eloquence." -Booklist"Evocative and precise. . . . An enjoyable narrative that captures the intricacies of a very complicated history."-Publishers Weekly"Informative and very entertaining . . . conjures up and re-creates baroque images and marvelous set pieces of feverish activity, long lost towns and shtetls [as well as] wonderful pictures of lost communities of Jews."-The Irish Times