Talks & Entertainment

Schama continues his 3,000-year chronicle of the Jewish people with the second in his three-volume illustrated cultural history, The Story of the Jews: Belonging 1492-1900. The second volume of the epic takes readers from the Renaissance to the modern age as it resumes the story of a people whose religion and cultural traditions have been at the center of the world’s narrative.

The Story of the Jews locates Jewish history and identity in the seldom heard voices of often forgotten or overlooked figures: not just rabbis, philosophers and political leaders, but a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a general in China during the Ming dynasty; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. It is a global story that travels from Italy to Columbia, from Istanbul to California. Full of “little revelations that add up to a culture,” Schama’s second volume is a story packed with detail and illustrations that shed new light on a crucial part of history.

Schama is a professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; Rough Crossings; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel. Book signing to follow.