The author’s broad-ranging and meticulous research has enabled him to reconstruct the contemporary history of the Jews in Libya with an incredible richness of detail, bringing into vivid relief the social, religious, cultural, and political lives of a people caught between centuries of tradition and a series of governments bent on plunging them headfirst into the modern world. This story—fraught with the passion, drama, tragicomedy, and conflict of a society in transition—will be an invaluable resource for scholars in Middle Eastern studies, Jewish studies, and contemporary European history. The wealth of documentation, much of it previously unknown or unpublished, makes this a particularly useful book.