| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Jewish Century. By Yuri Slezkine. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. xii, 438 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-691-11995-3.)
Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century defies standard categorization, and this makes it a masterly work of history. He posits the grand thesis that the last one hundred years can best be characterized as the Jewish century.	1
Slezkine employs a metaphor drawn from Greek mythology that casts historical actors within two broad categories, Mercurians and Apollonians. The former, like their patron, "did not herd animals, till the soil, or live by the sword" (p. 7), while the latter "owned much of the land, directed the flow of time, protected sailors and warriors, and inspired true poets" (p. 24). In chapter 1, Slezkine argues that Jews, as the quintessential Mercurians, were often derided for their particularism but ultimately proved triumphant in their embrace of mod ernization. Apollonians, on the other hand, emerged as the natural nemesis of Mercurians. The drama that played out between these two groups animates Slezkine's understanding not only of modern Jewish history but also of the development of twentieth-century European, American, and Middle Eastern history as well.	. . .

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