Something changed between when I read Vol 1 and now. This book is distinctly overegged, and while sweeping and comprehensive, still comes up as less than the sum of its parts. Schama structures the narrative roughly geographically and chronologically, beginning in Venice immediately after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal, and ending in Jerusalem with a diplomatic junket involving Zionist leader Theodor Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II. In between we visit most of Europe, the United States, and places as far afield as India and China.

Several themes reoccur. Good times turn to bad times, as rulers and populations repeatedly turn against Jews in their midst, ordering expulsions in the dead of winter and forced conversion. In almost all of Europe, Jews were barred from land ownership and craft guilds, and then punished for either being poor disease carriers, or becoming too suspiciously wealthy on commercial activity.

A second issue was one of community or integration. Jewish communities were often semi-autonomous from their Christian neighbors, accountable to their own laws and courts, with the caveat of being subject to gentile abuse with little recourse. Yet Jews often achieved some degree of integration with mainstream society. Amsterdam was tolerant enough to allow genuine pluralism, even in the 16th century. In England, once Jews were allowed to return after the restoration, some shaved their beards and baptized their children, becoming more or less indistinguishable from other English gentry. The story of Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza is a rough and tumble counter to these smooth stories of integration.

Mystical redemption returns again and again. The Messiah is a recurrent theme in Jewish spiritual belief, and several people claimed to be the Messiah. In the 15th and 16th century, there were rumors of Jews at the ends of the Earth, the biblical Lost Tribes set to return as an army. In the 17th and 18, it was spiritual redemption through the Sabbateans (heretics), and the Hasids (more orthodox than thou). Internal Jewish belief was matched by a widespread Christian belief that mass conversion of the Jews, preferably by acclamation, but by force if necessary, would herald the Day of Judgment and the Kingdom of Christ.

The 19th century and the flourishing of the industrial revolution saw cultured, urbane Jews in France, Austria, and Germany, join their nations as engineers, artists, and bankers. Yet at the same time, antisemitism arose as a specific political ideology, which cast all the disruptions of modernity as the fault of conniving Jewish bankers and communist radicals, while also justifying nations rooted in racial and ethnic origins as unable to accommodate "rootless" Jewish communities.

Schama has an eye for the florid and unusual, tracing the dramatic histories of false prophets, wealthy 'court Jews' who were bankers to kings, and notable artists and the like. Yet I think the texture of everyday life isn't quite captured to the same extent as in the first book, which I missed. And Schama's innate Toryism comes through in weird ways, like overlooking the Jewish communities of the Muslim world almost entirely, merely taking a few pages to describe their systematic degradation, and then describing almost identical abuse dealt out by Christians as just part of life. Similarly, I don't think that Cossacks and pogroms need a historical reappraisal as 'not really that bad'.

Ultimately, Schama remains a charming and deeply knowledgeable writer, but this book was a slog for me.