The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 [Paperback]

Finalist for theNational Jewish Book Award

Brilliant, far-reaching, passionate. . .sweeping and marvelously detailed. . .finely, intimately, movingly drawn. . . a book for the ages.
The New York Times

In this important work of historical restoration, respected journalist and historian Amos Elon shows how a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and activists.

In engaging, brilliantly etched portraits of Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and many others, Elon traces how a small minority came to be perceived as a deadly threat to German national integrity.

Amos Elonis the author of eight widely praised books includingFounder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild, and theNew York TimesbestsellerIsraelis: Founders and Sons.He was a frequent contributor toThe New York Times MagazineandThe New York Review of Books.He passed away in 2009.

Brilliant, far-reaching, passionate. . .sweeping and marvelously detailed. . .finely, intimately, movingly drawn. . . a book for the ages.
The New York Times

[Elon] is a master of the telling anecdote. . ..One should be grateful for what Elon has done.
Los Angeles Times

A work packed with beautifully sketched portraits, and constructed with a practiced eye for memorable, well-executed anecdotes.
The New York Times Book Review

Impressive. . .Could hardly be improved upon.
The New York Review of Books

If there is one book Americans should read this winter, it is Amos Elon'sThe Pity of It All--a meticulous and wrenching history of a people in a place at a moment in time that bears urgently upon our own.
Joan Didion