Stephen L. Pease traces more than 100 years of major the­o­ries put forth to explain the phe­nom­e­non of Jew­ish achieve­ment, using the tech­nique of a Chronol­o­gy to expose the strengths and flaws of each the­o­ry over time. He puts nature (genet­ics) and nur­ture (Jew­ish cul­ture) under an unre­lent­ing micro­scope, draw­ing on recent research into the impacts of cul­ture as well as the break­throughs in genet­ics fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of the Human Genome Project. Some of that research has estab­lished the genet­ic her­itage and link­ages between most of the world’s Jews dat­ing back thou­sands of years: the Ashke­naz­im, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and oth­ers. Pease also explores how new ways of think­ing are mov­ing beyond con­ven­tion­al genet­ics to present new insights into how nature and nur­ture may inter­act to shape what we become.