What is Steven J. Zipperstein reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

His entry begins:

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, published in 1963 and which I reread recently, remains surprisingly fresh. This all the more surprising since so much of it is devoted to Baldwin’s dinner with then-Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad which itself provides a brilliant portrait of the underpinnings of African-American rage. Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer is, on rereading, as crystalline, as gorgeous as the best of...[read on]

About Pogrom, from the publisher:

Separating historical fact from fantasy, an acclaimed historian retells the story of Kishinev, a riot that transformed the course of twentieth-century Jewish history.

So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked that it was “nothing less than a prototype for the Holocaust itself.” In three days of violence, 49 Jews were killed and 600 raped or wounded, while more than 1,000 Jewish-owned houses and stores were ransacked and destroyed. Recounted in lurid detail by newspapers throughout the Western world, and covered sensationally by America’s Hearst press, the pre-Easter attacks seized the imagination of an international public, quickly becoming the prototype for what would become known as a “pogrom,” and providing the impetus for efforts as varied as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the NAACP. Using new evidence culled from Russia, Israel, and Europe, distinguished historian Steven J. Zipperstein’s wide-ranging book brings historical insight and clarity to a much-misunderstood event that would do so much to transform twentieth-century Jewish life and beyond.

Read about Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, and learn more about Steven Zipperstein's scholarship at his Stanford webpage.

Writers Read: Steven Zipperstein.

--Marshal Zeringue