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

Author: Norman Lebrecht

Narrator: Jonathan Davis

Unabridged: 18 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/03/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

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.

About Norman Lebrecht

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David

Years ago, I enjoyed Lebrecht's book, Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics. Most of his other books are also about music, but this book is about a very different subject; it is about the lives of Jews who were very influential across the century 1847-1947. What is......more

Goodreads review by Morgan

This is a hard book to review. It was hard to read. It is raw. It is disturbing. It is not a book you would choose for ‘pleasant reading’. Page 301: “A conference of thirty-two countries called by President Roosevelt at Évian in Switzerland [1938] resolves that no one wants Jews, signaling that Hitle......more

Goodreads review by Neela

১৮৪৭ থেকে ১৯৪৭ অর্থাৎ কমিউনিস্ট মেনিফেস্টো’র সময় থেকে ইসরাইল রাষ্ট্র গঠন পর্যন্ত; এই ১০০ বছর সময়ের মধ্যে কিছুসংখ্যক ইহুদি কিভাবে পৃথিবীকে বদলে দিয়েছে, আমাদের প্রাত্যহিক জীবন যাত্রার প্রতিটি অনুষঙ্গে তাঁরা কিভাবে ওতপ্রোতভাবে জড়িয়ে গিয়েছে তারই গল্প আছে এই বইতে। শিক্ষা, সাহিত্য, সঙ্গীত, সিনেমা, ব......more

Reviewed for Library Journal. I do think lots of people should read this, even as it’s hard to recommend it, because it is so dark and overwrought, but so is Jewish history.......more