Books, Arts & Manners: An Ideology of Blood

The History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (Harper & Row, 629 pp., $25)

The famed British journalist Paul Johnson wields his magic pen to tell the wonderful tale of the Jews. But the enchantment does not hold, because, in the end, you can’t turn four millennia of diverse and scarcely intersecting stories into a single, unitary, linear, harmonious history—which is what Johnson pretends to do, with intellectually disastrous results.

JN

About the Author

Jacob Neusner

The History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (Harper & Row, 629 pp., $25)

The famed British journalist Paul Johnson wields his magic pen to tell the wonderful tale of the Jews. But the enchantment does not hold, because, in the end, you can’t turn four millennia of diverse and scarcely intersecting stories into a single, unitary, linear, harmonious history—which is what Johnson pretends to do, with intellectually disastrous results.