The Illustrated History of the Jewish People

By most accounts Jewish history begins with the Babylonians' destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. This well-made compendium, written by many hands, is in agreement. However, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People departs from traditional history in many ways, most notably in its attempts to understand figures who have been reduced to symbols. Herod, for example, "deserved his reputation for ruthlessness, cruelty and paranoia," but was also a product of his time, caught in a complex web of politics only partly of his own making. Editor Nicholas De Lange and the volume's contributors do a fine job of gathering the many strains of Jewish history into a single narrative, which ends with a discussion of the ongoing search for peace in the Middle East.