Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947

by Norman Lebrecht

Overview

This lively chronicle of the years 1847­–1947—the century when the Jewish people changed how we see the world—is “[a] thrilling and tragic history...especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a people and a past” (The Wall Street Journal).

In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known—Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.

What do these visionaries have in common? They all had Jewish origins. They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways. In 1847, the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world’s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How? Why?

Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent, beautifully designed volume is “an urgent and moving history” (The Spectator, UK) and a celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982134228
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	160,163
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Norman Lebrecht is the world’s bestselling author on classical music. His Whitbread Award-winning novel, The Song of Names, is currently being developed into a feature film. Aside from the history of Western music, he has a lifelong passion for the culture and chronicles of the Jewish people and is the author of Genius & Anxiety. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Thinking Outside vii

A Short Glossary of Jewish Terms xv

1 1847: The Visitor 1

2 1851: The Wars of the Jews 29

3 1863: Brought to Book 45

4 1875: Carmen, Quand-même 61

5 1881: The Tsar's Hamburger 85

6 1890: Two Beards on a Train 115

7 1897: Sex in the City 147

8 1905: The Known Unknowns 181

9 1911: Blues 'n' Jews 203

10 1917: Dear Lord 229

11 1924: Schoolboys 261

12 1933: Four Murders 285

13 1938: Cities of Refuge 299

14 1942: Black Days 325

15 1947: New York, New York 351

16 2018: Bubbles at Breakfast 383

Acknowledgments 385

Notes 389

Bibliography 403

Index 419

Editorial Reviews

10/14/2019

Music commentator Lebrecht (Why Mahler?) catalogues a century of important Jewish lives in this idiosyncratic and frantic cultural history. Each chapter centers on a single, pivotal year, allowing Lebrecht to weave together a collection of anecdotes and pared down biographical details of its subjects. He opens and closes his analysis outside the stated historical boundaries, beginning with Karl Marx’s 1843 publication of “On the Jewish Question” and ending with the events leading up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, focusing throughout on Jews in Europe and the United States. Chapters are sometimes thematic, such as one devoted to Jewish developments in the study of sexuality, or another on early-20th-century music, while others are a strange melange of unrelated ideas, such as one that jumps among the filming of Casablanca, a trial convicting God in Auschwitz, a litany of suicides within Nazi-occupied territories, and the invention of birth control pills. Most of the figures are well-known and male, though there are some less familiar names, such as Eliza Davis, who influenced Charles Dickens’s view of the Jews, or British rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, who vigorously worked to expatriate Jews just before WWII. Lebrecht can tell an enjoyable story with verve, though the lack of clear trajectory or organization dilutes his points. While readers interested in 19th- and 20th-century Judaism might enjoy dipping in and out of these snippets from important people’s lives, this overfilled work founders as a whole. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] thrilling and tragic history... Mr. Lebrecht is especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a people and a past.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Chemotherapy, the theory of relativity, great literature, blood transfusions, political theory, even Google are among the accomplishments of Jewish men and women, and they’re all celebrated in this lively, enlightening history.” —Washington Post, “Best Books of December”

“A spirited account that explores how Jews changed the world.” —The Guardian (UK)

“An altogether brilliant and serious but approachable and readable popular history and survey of an extraordinary century of Jewish achievement....[This] book is unfailingly urbane and anecdotal at the same time it is punctilious about the facts. Lebrecht is hearteningly scrupulous about separating legends that cling like barnacles to the drier and more prosaic and inarguable facts of history.” —Buffalo News

“Like Jewish destiny itself, Lebrecht’s analysis is multi-dimensional, complex, and rich in substance.” —The Times of Israel

“Claims to have ‘changed the world’ tend to be exaggerations, but Lebrecht’s subtitle, How Jews Changed the World 1847-1947, seems understated. The world wasn’t changed, it was remade... [Narrated] by a sprightly raconteur, with anecdotes and jokes, digressions and embellishments. Lebrecht piles them high in a ziggurat of enthusiasm for those ‘who changed the way we see the world.’” —The Times (UK)


“An absorbing, well-told story of Jewish achievement that is a pleasure to read.... Written with passion and authority, this book shows how these great minds always took a different point of view—and changed how we see the world.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A unique perspective on the role of Jews in European intellectual life, this will be of interest to music and art history readers, as well at those interested in Jewish history.” —Library Journal

“Invoking heroic, creative, courageous images through the large panorama and the small vignette, Lebrecht... teases out more than 100 years of Jewish lore in this dense, entertaining work.” —Bookreporter.com

“Urgent and moving history.” —The Spectator (UK)

From the Publisher

★ 2019-09-15
How adversity shaped a century of Jewish creativity and invention.

"A Jew is like a man with a short arm," said the composer Gustav Mahler. "He has to swim harder to reach the shore." In this beautifully crafted work, music historian and novelist Lebrecht (Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World, 2010, etc.) argues convincingly that "existential angst"—a dread of losing their rights to citizenship and free speech amid widespread persecution—freed many Jews to pursue unusual accomplishments with abandon. Not expecting acceptance, "free to think the unthinkable," Freud, Proust, Einstein, and others worked brilliantly in such fields as science, art, and music, not because of any genetic advantage but out of opportunity made possible by "marginality." With anxiety as a "primary motivating factor, the engine of fresh thinking," they began in the mid-19th century, and especially in the decade after the Dreyfus Affair, to engage in acts of genius. Such individuals as Marx and Disraeli set the tone for "a century of Jewish invention," unafraid of criticism from those in power. They paved the way for diverse successors, as well, including Trotsky, Sarah Bernhardt, Jonas Salk, and through to Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. Taking us into many spheres of endeavor, Lebrecht offers revealing portraits of and stories about these Jews, practicing and not, as they crossed artistic boundaries, advanced science, and reshaped myriad aspects of Western society in the period through the 1947 founding of Israel. He provides nuanced explorations of individuals from Einstein, "a religious man of no religion, a perfect Jewish paradox," to Kafka, who knows "something terrible is about to happen and there is nothing anyone can do about it." Written with passion and authority, this book shows how these great minds always took a different point of view—and changed how we see the world. Lebrecht also includes a helpful glossary of Jewish terms.

An absorbing, well-told story of Jewish achievement that is a pleasure to read.

Kirkus Reviews

11/01/2019

In Lebrecht's (The Song of Name) Jewish world, genius goes hand in hand with anxiety, and peril is never far from the frenetic inhabitants. Largely focused on German and French intellectuals, artists, and scientists, this work traces a line from Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn to figures such as Rosalind Franklin, with side trips to the Jewish quarters of Shanghai and Mumbai. Judaism for many of these people is a liability, either denied or shed, but often providing a vernacular for their achievements without being monolithic. All of this has a breathless feel, as stories spill over each other, told as though they are all happening at once, and many ending in unspeakable tragedy. As a longstanding music commentator and journalist, Lebrecht weaves in his own stories and anecdotes; for example, a somewhat improbable sounding conversation between Isaac Bashevis Singer and Manachem Begin was told to Lebrecht by Singer himself. VERDICT A unique perspective on the role of Jews in European intellectual life, this will be of interest to music and art history readers, as well as those interested in Jewish history.—Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.

Library Journal

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