In the second of two volumes of this magnificently illustrated cultural history--the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews--Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish people, spanning from their expulsion from Spain in the Inquisition across six hundred years to the present day. It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in the face of oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the centuries and the continents--from the Iberian Peninsula and the collapse of "the golden age" to the shtetls of Russia to the dusty streets of infant Hollywood. Its voices ring loud and clear, from the philosophical musings of Spinoza to the poetry written on slips of paper in concentraion camps. Within these pages, the Enlightenment unfolds, a great diaspora transforms a country, a Viennese psychaiatrist forever changes the conception of the human mind. And a great story unfolds. Not--as often imagined--of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians, from the Soviets to America. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.

Monarchy and Matrimony is the first comprehensive study of Elizabeth I's courtships. Susan Doran argues that the cult of the `Virgin Queen' was invented by her ministers, and that Elizabeth was forced into celibacy by political necessity. Doran's detailed examination of the different suits is based on extensive archival research across Europe. Rather than focusing on Elizabeth's personality and image, she views the question within a wider political and religious context. She shows how the question of Elizabeth's marriage was divisive for England, affecting both political life and international relations, and provoking popular propaganda in the form of plays, poetry and paintings.

For many years scholars have been aware that Michelangelo included his own image in his art. In this study, Edith Balas discusses two previously unrecognized double self-portraits. The earliest of these, a statue known as the Victory, was a private project in which an aging Michelangelo of depicted himself surmounted by an idealized alter ego, a figure associated with his younger self, his beloved friend Tommaso Cavalieri, and the David and Goliath theme that preoccupied him through much of his career. In the second of these double self-portraits, The Conversion of Paul in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican, the artist, again portraying himself in youth and old age, used a central event in sacred history to make a statement about his own spiritual transformation from Neoplatonist "paganism" to a more orthodox form of Christian piety. Dr. Balas carefully explores the meaning of both works with reference to Michelangelo's life, art and poetry, and reveals them to be among the profoundest autobiographical statements in the history of Western art.