{"title":"Books by James McAuley","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780300255201","title":"Edmond de Rothschild","description":"An absorbing portrait of Edmond de Rothschild, who defied his class to help build a nation—and found his identity in the processEdmond de Rothschild (1845–1934) was born into one of the wealthiest families in history, but his legacy lies beyond banking, art, and aristocratic privilege. In this compelling biography, award-winning historian and journalist James McAuley tells the story of a man who defied his elite world to support a radical cause: the creation of a Jewish homeland.   Drawing on rare access to archives—including Rothschild’s own long-lost memoir—McAuley reveals how and why this reserved French aesthete became a driving force in the early Zionist settlement of Palestine. Rothschild’s journey from the salons of Paris to the fields of Eretz Israel is a tale of emotional awakening, political conviction, and personal transformation—of a man’s search for a cause and discovery of himself.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56367950987637,"sku":"9780300255201","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300255201.jpg?v=1791212742"},{"product_id":"the-house-of-fragile-things","title":"The House of Fragile Things – Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France","description":"A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction  “The depths of French anti-Semitism is the stunning subject that Mr. McAuley lays bare. . . . [He] tells this haunting saga in eloquent detail. As French anti-Semitism rises once again today, the effect is nothing less than chilling.”—Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal  “Elegantly written and deeply moving. . . . [A] haunting book.”—David Bell, New York Review of Books   In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps.      In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin de siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d’Anvers—McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466746339701,"sku":"9780300264692","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300264692.jpg?v=1785654807"},{"product_id":"the-shadow-and-the-flame-1","title":"The Shadow and the Flame","description":"An urgent history – intimate in its telling, epic in its scope – of the argument that shaped the postwar world: how to define and remember the Holocaust.   ‘Extraordinary and profoundly moving. The Shadow and the Flame is essential reading’ EDMUND DE WAAL‘Absolutely superb. An important and hitherto untold story which is more relevant now than ever’ BART VAN ESThe end of the Second World War marked the end of the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. Stunned by grief, survivors faced the task of not only forging new lives but of shaping how this cataclysm might be remembered by generations to come.   Taking us into the minds and hearts of the individuals – some well-known, like Hannah Arendt, Salo Baron and Elie Wiesel, others largely forgotten – who reckoned with this atrocity, The Shadow and the Flame recounts the fierce debate that ensued. From Paris to New York, from the desecrated ghettos of Poland to the fledgling kibbutzim of Israel, acclaimed historian James McAuley reveals how the event that gradually came to be called the Holocaust made an uneasy transition into memory – a memory that, far from receding into the past, weighs all too heavily upon the present.   Bold, learned and infused with the energy and emotion of its principals, The Shadow and the Flame is the dramatic account of the contentious process – at once painful and shot through with urgency and consequence – of crafting history in real time.   ‘Compelling, relevant to our times, and beautifully written’ SIMON KUPER‘Reminds us that the creation of public memory is never accidental, and never permanent’ ANNE APPLEBAUM‘A stunning, deeply humane book’ CLARISSA WARD‘Magnificent ... represents a milestone in Holocaust literature’ DANIEL MENDELSOHN","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510026248565,"sku":"9781847927385","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781847927385.jpg?v=1788187054"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-james-mcauley.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}