"Arguing that American Jews have created a distinctive American Jewish heritage that interweaves Judaism with democracy, Wenger's compelling and elegant book shows that this heritage rewrites both Jewish and American history into a relatively seamless whole."--Deborah Dash Moore, director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan
"History Lessons tells an important story, one that analyzes the ways in which a minority group--in this case, American Jews up to the end of World War II--constructed a history for themselves. Wenger has tackled a virtually untapped vein of material. There is certainly nothing like this book in American Jewish history."--Hasia R. Diner, New York University