The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable renaissance in the academic study of the history of the Jews in Great Britain and of their impact upon British history. In this volume Professor Geoffrey Alderman presents essays that reflect the richness of this renaissance, penned by a new generation of British and American scholars who are uninhibited by the considerations of communal image and public obligation that once exercised a powerful influence on Anglo-Jewish historiography. History does not have lessons, says Alderman, but it may provide signposts, and he adds that in the case of the essays presented here "I believe there is one signpost that we would all do well to ponder: in multicultural Britain hard-working immigrants may be welcome, or they may be feared -- or both. They are destined to remain not quite British, and, for better or worse, they are destined to bequeath this otherness to the generations that follow them."

'On Pagans, Jews, and Christians' is an important addition to his masterly work, bringing together nineteen essays written in the past five years from sources such as The New York Review of Books, The American Scholar, and the Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. It is written with literate clarity and elegance, humane wisdom, and breadth of intellect. The focus of this book is the secular cultures of pagan Greece and imperial Rome, and the religious cultures of Judaism and Christianity which, in turn, grew from and influenced them and the modern world. For Momigliano, religion, secular ideology, and politics live in and illuminate the present. Chapters include “The Jews of Italy” (history viewed in the autobiographical perspective of the Momigliano family), “The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State,” “How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans,” and “The Theological Efforts of the Roman Upper Classes in the First Century B.C.