Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
Written by Norman Lebrecht
Narrated by Jonathan Davis
5/5
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About this audiobook
In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known—Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.
What do these visionaries have in common? They all had Jewish origins. They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways. In 1847, the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world’s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How? Why?
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent, beautifully designed volume is “an urgent and moving history” (The Spectator, UK) and a celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
Norman Lebrecht
Norman Lebrecht is the author of twelve works of non-fiction, including the international bestsellers The Maestro Myth, Why Mahler? and The Life and Death of Classical Music, which have been translated into seventeen languages. His first novel, The Song of Names, won a Whitbread Award and is now an award-winning film. He writes for the Spectator and the Wall Street Journal, and is working on his fourth novel. He lives in London. Follow him at @NLebrecht and visit normanlebrecht.com.
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Reviews for Genius & Anxiety
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Norman Lebrecht weaves the famous, the infamous and the unremembered into a rhapsody of amazing stories of genius. Although some of the transitions between the characters are abrupt, the life stories are compelling. Thank you Mr. Lebrecht for taking on this huge challenge of compiling a century of brilliance and angst.