How do you tell the entire history of the Jewish people in three volumes? Simon Shama will

be here to talk about his second installment of The Story of the Jews.

What tale do 12 illuminated manuscripts tell us about the medieval world? Christoph de

Hamel will join us to talk about meetings with remarkable manuscripts. Alexander Altar

will give us an update from the literary world. Plus we'll talk about what we and the

water world are reading. This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Simon Shama joins us now from London. His latest book is The Story of the Jews Vol. 2,

belonging 1492 to 1900. Simon, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So the last time we talked was actually not about volume one in this series, it was a book

in between that you did about British portraiture, the face of Britain. Was that deliberate?

How did that end up working out that way?

No. To my top of Shisha Grin, I think, everybody imagined, and I was even in the group as this

delusion, that I could do The History of the Jews, The Stories of the Jews in one volume, Pamela.

What a ridiculous idea. My great predecessor at Columbia University took 18 for the

to write it. So it was thought because the portrait book was in conjunction with an exhibition

at National Portrait Gallery in London, so that would happen after I'd close the book in effect

on Jewish history. It didn't happen that way. So I did the portrait book and then came back.

It's called Tashuvar, which in Hebrew means both return and repentance. And that was probably true,

in my case.

It was expected that you were going to get from 1000 BCE to the current day in how many pages

and in how much time originally.

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