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GENIUS AND ANXIETY

Norman Lebrecht

How Jews Changed the World, 1847 - 1947

A unique chronicle of the years 1847-1947, the century when the Jewish people changed the world and it changed them.
In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the way we see 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 have Jewish origins. They all have a gift for thinking outside the box and all of them think fast. 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?

Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to 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, he begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded.

Norman Lebrecht is the author of 12 works of non-fiction and three novels. His international bestsellers THE MAESTRO MYTH, WHY MAHLER, and THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC have been translated into 17 languages. Norman Lebrecht's first novel, THE SONG OF NAMES, won a Whitbread Award in 2003. His website, Slipped Disc, is the world's #1 classical music noticeboard, with 1.5 million visitors each month. In a 40-year journalistic career, he was a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, a presenter on BBC Radio 3 and the Assistant Editor of the Evening Standard. He writes for the Spectator and the Wall Street Journal. Norman Lebrecht has taught at numerous universities, among them Yale, Syracuse, SUNY Buffalo, UMKC Kansas City, USC Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon, Peabody/John Hopkins, Tel Aviv and Shanghai Conservatoire of Music. Norman Lebrecht lives in central London.
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Published 2020-01-14 by Oneworld

Comments

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

A book of enormous passion and persuasive power.

This book is a joy. Concise, vivid, well-written, in clear antithesis to banality. One not only enjoys the wealth of interesting facts and people, but is also delighted to be treated with many of [Lebrecht's] aphoristic pearls. A vivid psychological study of Jewishness.

That's the charm of this book, narrated not by a straight-faced professional historian, but by a sprightly raconteur, with anecdotes and jokes, digressions and embellishments. Genius and anxiety are coupled not simply to suggest Jewish geniuses were anxious about being Jewish. Lebrecht goes farther; such angst was the very making of genius

A compelling book... [Lebrecht] makes a forbidding subject seem approachable.'

Lebrecht vividly portrays the tensions between success and discrimination, offering a timely reminder of what western civilisation owes to the Jews.

a riveting, gossipy, action-packed, seam-bursting blast through 100 years of (mainly) European history, which draws us into the complex, frequently messy lives of musicians and politicians, philosophers and scientists, bankers and scholars. Lebrecht is an exuberant storyteller who ably brings these personalities to life. Impressively wide-ranging in scope and unflaggingly fascinating in detail.

A dazzling masterpiece depicting the glory and tragedy of Europe's most persecuted people. Emotionally drained, but also exhilarated by Lebrecht's gripping narrative about the Jews' contribution to Europe's intellectual triumphs, I despaired by the end that anti-Semitism is once again shamelessly paraded by monstrous politicians - and will end in the same raw violence suffered by so many of this book's heroes.

US: Scribner ; Chinese (simpl): Citic ; Hebrew: Kinneret

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