Overview

An insightful new biography of the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair, focused on the man himself and based on newly accessible documents   On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In this book, Maurice Samuels gives readers an entirely new insight into Dreyfus himself—from the point of view of the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his promising career as an officer, his being falsely accused and imprisoned for selling secrets to Germany, the pardon he was eventually granted, and his life of obscurity after World War I.   Samuels’s striking perspective is enriched by a newly available archive of more than three thousand documents and objects donated by the Dreyfus family. Samuels argues, unlike other historians, that Dreyfus was far from an “assimilated” Jew. Rather, he epitomized a new model of Jewish identity made possible by the French Revolution, when France became the first European nation to grant Jews full legal equality. This book analyzes Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to antisemitism over the course of his life—a story that, as global antisemitism rises, echoes still. It also shows the profound effect of the Dreyfus Affair on the lives of Jews around the world.

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9780300254006

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Reviews

“In this pioneering biography, Maurice Samuels restores Alfred Dreyfus to the affair that bears his name. In doing so, he rehabilitates an often disregarded form of modern Jewish identity and shows how one Jewish life could matter so much to so many others. A triumph.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism against Itself  

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“In this pioneering biography, Maurice Samuels restores Alfred Dreyfus to the affair that bears his name. In doing so, he rehabilitates an often disregarded form of modern Jewish identity and shows how one Jewish life could matter so much to so many others. A triumph.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism against Itself

Author Information

Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University. He is the author most recently of The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern. He lives in Branford, CT.

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