"Soul searching and human . . . A moving personal testament to courage."—Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

"There is, to my knowledge, no book that brings together more masterfully in less than 200 pages the daunting problems and massive research on the Holocaust than Mark Roseman's account of the notorious Wannsee Conference. Concise and very accessible, yet also comprehensive in its contextualization of the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' and its origins, I found this a most illuminating study of the cold-blooded planning and execution of the most horrific crime of the 20th century."—V. R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University

"The best single account of Palestine under the British mandate . . . This will doubtlessly become the authoritative text for the pre-state history of Israel."—Omer Bartov, The New York Times Book Review

"Each story [is] a kind of window on the human comedy, host to a parade of lovers, gangsters and apostates . . . Singer, of course, was looking back on his childhood from an irreversible exile; he knew that the shadow of the Holocaust would fall across even the sunniest of these tales. The strong, vital element of all his fiction, which animates this book as well, was his refusal to let the annihilation step backward into the past. He grants his father and mother and neighbors the full dignity and complexity of their doomed lives, and in doing so, makes them briefly live again."—Adam Kirsch, The Washington Post Book World