DUST & ASHES is now in Print

My new book is now out.  I have held it in my hands.

It is a book about how certain Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century thought they had made it, had arrived, were safely set up for the future.  Playwrights and actors, journalists and critics, poets and novelists, they felt they were were not only accepted, but that they were leading players in the game of popular and elite culture.

 If they saw signs of opposition, the rise of anti-Semitism, they tried to brush it off, to think that it really had nothing to do with them, for they were Frenchmen and women, Germans, Danish citizens, and the power of their art and intellect would overcome the attempts to shut them up.  They felt their problems were existential, psychological quirks, minor flaws that actually enhanced the creative act.

But there were premonitions of disaster ahead: a dream here, a casual comment there, an accident while on the railway ride home late at night.  A few, to be sure, reached the end of their lives not knowing what lay ahead, not realizing their achievements would be airbrushed out of history and their reputations forgotten.

Others lived long enough to see the dark future looming.

They tried to run away and to warn others, but it was too late.  Their closest friends tended to abandon them or betray them.  Their world, in other words, crumbled away into dust and ashes.

This book is about Sarah Bernhardt, Bernard Berenson, Georg Brandes, Catulle Mendes, Andre Suares, Arthur Meyer,  and a cluster of similar artists and intellectuals.  If most ofthe names seem unfamiliar to you, that is the point: they were once at the top of their game and were celebrated throughout France and Europe, as well as in America and Australia.

Though there are still notices saying it is "unavailable",  these are temporary glitches.

Order Jews in an Illusion of Paradise: Dust & Ashes,

volume 1 "Comedians and Catastrophes".

It has been published by Cambridge Scholars Press in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, but is available through amazon.com, barnes&nobel, bookdepositiory and all the other usual online booksellers.

Unfortunately, you won't find it in any bookshops, not unless you go in and start to make inquiries.
Nor will you find it in your local public library or your insitutional library, not unless you call in and start to make requests.  You won't even find any reviews, not unless you start to write them yourself.  Short reviews and short notices in your local press, newsletter or blogsite, anything will start to get the ball rolling.