The lack of information on Sefaradim in Arab Lands is deplorable. The author perhaps lacks knowledge of these languages to adequately research the matter. His assesment of these people seems to be limited to those today in Israel. What about those that went to Canada,the US, France, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina?

If you are at all interested in the history of the Sephardic people this is the book to get. Sachar takes you on a journey from the plains of Al-andalus to the deserts of the Ottoman Empire, the thriving metropolis of the Dutch, to the modern state of Israel. The book is utterly readable and reads less like a dry history book and more like a novel where the central character is an entire nation. There is relatively little in the way of books about the Sephardic experience, and those that do exist for the most part are stiff and scholarly. Sachar makes it palatable while at the same time showing an incredible breath of knowledge and research that went into this book. BUY IT NOW!

Sachar's book is often found on college reading lists for history classes relating to European Jewry (often upper-level). This is very unforunate, as it is quite bigotted and simple-minded. Recommended only for Americans who seek black and white answers to the complex problems of human interaction.

While it is quite normal for authors of Jewish History to take sides, unfortunately in this book the author gives such a distorted view that it is in many cases misleading. While I am not an expert on all facets of Jewish History, from the parts that I know I was able to find a number of basic factual errors. For example, the author states that Zyklon B gas was used throughout the Holocaust at all of the camps. In Treblinka, the Germans used carbon monoxide exhaust from tank engines. Of course this is a minor mistake, but it is an example of the author making mistakes even when he didn't have any political reasons to. A more major error is that the author portrays the Vilna Gaon as a proto-Maskil. While it is true that the Vilna Gaon said that if one isn't proficient in certain areas of science one can't fully understand Torah. Still, the Vilna's Gaon had many students, and they founded Yeshivot. Perhaps the author is uncomfortable mentioning this because these Yeshivot were one of the main reason that Haskala was unsucessful in Russia before 1860.
My main two difficulties with the book are that there is a glaring lack of basic critical information and that the author simply doesn't bother mentioning people or institutions that he doesn't like. Hungarian Jewry is almost not mentioned in the book and is ignored comparitively.
There are so many mis-representations in the book that it is sad. For example, Rabbi SR Hirsch and Dr. Zecharya Frankel are breifly portrayed as being idealogically close to each other. They both would either be insulted or amused to see this because in fact they were bitter opponents.
The main thrust of the book is to show the secularization of the Jews in Europe. But the book doesn't even bring any statistical evidence even in terms of German Jewry which should have been relatively easy ( i.e. comparing the membership in the IRG, Hirsh's synagogue, with membership in the Reform Temple in Frankfort at the same time ), and of course doesn't even bother with Polish/Russian Jewry.
The author simply ignores people or movements that he doesn't like. Vladimir ( Zev ) Jabotinsky, the leaded of the revisionist Zionists, isn't even mentioned. The fact that the Bund won the elections in the mid 30's is also not mentioned. Agudath Israel, the orthodox union, is only mentioned as an Israeli political party, as if they magically appeared on the scene. In fact they were one of the main contendors in the inter-Jewish battles between WW I and WW II. The K'hila in Lodz was controlled by the Aguda for a number of years.

Howard Sachar is about as good an historian as you could hope for. His books are detailed, clear, and generally free of bias. "Course of Modern Jewish History" is no exception.

This book follows the history of Jews throughout the world from the 18th century until today. It does so in a generally chronological order, although at times it breaks this standard to move country by country during a specific period. Each chapter ends with a "conclusion" which usually lasts anywhere from a paragraph to a page or two. This section can generally be skipped (unless you are cramming for a exam and don't want to actually be bothered with reading the chapter).

Because it is a survey text, it never goes into quite as much detail as I would like. The section on the Holocaust felt particularly rushed. Despite its prodigious length (it is nearly 900 pages), I wouldn't have complained if it were even another 100 pages longer.

Despite these shortcomings, it is a tremendous first step in the examination of modern Jewish history, and it could even serve as the final step for many.