They All Are Jews From Moses to Einstein - by Mac Davis with illustrations by E. E. Claridge - Published by Jordan Publishing Co. New York 1937 - first edition with original dust jacket. Special copy signed: "Review copy not to be sold" - printed in a few copies for the purpose of examination and final proofreading before its publication for wide distribution. Rare.
From the introduction to the book: "Maybe they are not the greatest that could have been selected, but their deeds are so tremendous and so varied in scope, that as a group they actually compose the history and progress of the Jew through civilization. It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened to many who appear within the covers of this book if fate had been otherwise. If a raucous Prussian guard at the Berlin border had remained adamant in refusing entry to the German capital a stammering, humpbacked yeshiva student would the world have known a Moses Mendelssohn? If a pious, aged, learned Jew had insisted that his five sons remain at home in the ghetto and become rabbinic scholars instead of sending them to foreign lands to become merchants, would the House of Rothschild have written the most brilliant chapter in the financial and political history of Europe? If Spinoza had not been cursed by his people and driven from his home, would he have become the greatest philosopher of modern times? If his mother had not purchased a second-hand piano, would George Gershwin have come to write the songs of a nation? All these are melodramatic ifs that shaped not only great careers but also, in many cases, the history of the world. ... In this calendar of heroes and heroines, you will find melodrama, ambition, power, courage, love... Turn these pages and skip through time...".
Important publication about sixty majestic figures among the Jewish people from Moses to Einstein - a description of the highlights in the lives of the most influential figures of the Jewish people accompanied by a portrait of each of them - a significant part of the people dealt with in the book was written in the lifetimes of the figures. Among the personalities appearing: Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, the boxer Daniel Mendoza, Moses Montefiore, Karl Marx, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Dreyfus, Sigmund Freud, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Nathan Straus, and many others. The author managed to summarize in just one page for each of the figures, a concise and accurate description of his work and achievements and contribution to Israel and humanity in a clear and concise language, and to review the personalities by connecting the highlights of their lives into one overall picture.
For example, about Albert Einstein, he describes the introverted and shy child who tends to solitude who one day encounters a compass, the oscillating needle aroused great wonder in him, in school he was an indifferent student but showed amazing genius in mathematics and goes on to describe how he arrived at his groundbreaking global achievements in the field of physics. In the same way, the author managed to distill the character of Theodor Herzl: "Twenty-year-old Theodor Herzl was an acclaimed playwright and journalist in Vienna. He was in Paris as a correspondent for his newspaper, when the Dreyfus affair burst upon the world. Seeing the hatred of his people even on the part of a civilized country like France, he became appalled because of the well-being of the Jews scattered among the nations of the world. From that day on, his goal was the emancipation of the Jews as a people. He wrote his book called "The Jewish State" to express the need for a Jewish homeland...". He also summarizes the Dreyfus Affair in just one page, while actually including all the important details of the Affair, as he also does with the other personalities.
127 p. 26 cm. Hard cover with illustrated dust jacket with the figures of Moses and Einstein. Minor tears to dust jacket. Body of the book in very good condition.
