The illustrated atlas of Jewish civilization

by Martin Gilbert

Behold the beauty, majesty, and accuracy of revolutionary new world atlases published by Macmillan and produced from the $20 million Bertelsmann/RV Verlag world digital cartographic database. Peerless in design, quality, and practicality, these new atlases are published in print and CD-ROM formats and feature unique, distinctive -- Special coloration shows what the Earth really looks like from space-- Uniform scale across all continents provides true one-to-one comparisons-- Transportation routes and POIs are highlighted so map can be used for travel as well as home and office reference-- Up-to-date research and clean, modern type ensure readers are getting the most current and clear informationAnd these are just the opening titles in the Macmillan Atlas Geographic Reference category. Look for innovative new titles in Historic Reference such as The Atlas of the Civil War and Popular Reference such as The Atlas of War & Bosnia Herzegovina.

Genres: History, Judaism, Jewish, Nonfiction, Geography, Middle East

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

The official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”

Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”

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Reviews

[Carly O'Connell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not used to reviewing nonfiction so I'm not quite sure what to say.
I feel like I did learn a lot about Jewish history - contextualizing it with dates and maps filled out some details that I had picked up over the years.
I wish the author had stuck to a more strict chronological approach instead of jumping all over the timeline. That got a little confusing.
In the early chapters, he does not always make a distinction between where his information is coming from--the Bible or archaeological evidence and other records. I found his end chapters on modern day Israel and World Jewry most interesting and informative.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this fairly eye-opening work for my first history of the Jews because it seemed to be one of the better examples out there. It's comprehensive, disturbing and does a good job at condensing in 200 pages thousands of years of frequently appalling history that is almost enough to turn one into a Zionist. But as another reader points out, it becomes biased toward the end. Martin Gilbert is a Zionist, an ideology of which I am wary, so I would say that the book's strength is the detailed narrative until the inception of Zionism in the 19th century, when I feel that he/they start omitting facts that don't fit/run counter to their fairly pro-Israel narrative. For example they mention how some South African Jews were "champions of human rights" fighting apartheid, well how about the Palestinians doing the same thing? A quality effort, to be sure, that revealed to me the horrifying extent of anti-Semitism through the ages, but I urge readers to think critically about Zionism and read other texts regarding both the founding of the state of Israel and the often sordid realities of the present: the manner in which Arabs inadvertently paid the price for the Holocaust and ended up being persecuted by persecuted people. And to be clear, the history is messy and complicated. There were wrong-doings on both sides. I am aware for example that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a Nazi sympathizer.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tried reading a book about Sephardic Jews but quickly realized that I did not have enough background information to fully understand that book. Luckily I saw this on the bargain shelf at Barnes and Noble for $5. The reading was dense, but pictures and maps helped me synthesize the information. I now have a basic knowledge of Jewish history and migration, and have restarted my book on the Sephardim.

[Bubba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great maps, pictures and illustrations but the narrative gets a little one-sided near the end.

[Helga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heh, a book about Jews written by someone with the last name of 'Bacon.' Heh. Heehee. Makes me want to have a BLT on a bagel, it does. I must need sleep, because a Bacon-Jewish history book should not be that amusing to me. Sorry, Ms. Bacon for giggling at your name.[return][return]The book has pretty maps and has a good sense of continuity. The first parts of it might offend those who seem to think that the world is 6,000 years old, but most people would enjoy this book. [return][return]Unlike my accounting text, it would not make a good panini press.