iddish: A Glob­al Cul­ture is a full-col­or cat­a­log of the per­ma­nent exhi­bi­tion of the same name at the Yid­dish Book Cen­ter. The author and Chief Cura­tor of the cen­ter, David Mazow­er, orga­nizes this hefty, well-designed vol­ume around fif­teen themes, some of which are best­sellers, women’s voic­es, Mod­ernism, the Holo­caust, music, type­writ­ers, and celebri­ties. Each sec­tion opens with descrip­tive para­graphs on the theme, then unfolds with delight­ful images and insight­ful cap­tions, pro­vid­ing an at-home expe­ri­ence of explor­ing a muse­um collection. 

Mazow­er describes the method­ol­o­gy for the ​“panoram­ic sto­ry” told in the exhi­bi­tion and the book as a ​“jux­ta­po­si­tion of arti­facts, images, quotes, and nar­ra­tives.” The eclec­ti­cism of the sec­tions demon­strates the scope of Yid­dish as a glob­al cul­ture with­out essen­tial­iz­ing or homog­e­niz­ing these his­to­ries. Under­ly­ing both the book and the exhi­bi­tion are a series of prin­ci­ples that guid­ed the intel­lec­tu­al for­ma­tion of the project includ­ing explor­ing Yid­dish as mod­ern, glob­al, and a mass pub­lic cul­ture as well as attend­ing to the voic­es of Yid­dish women, under­rep­re­sent­ed in schol­ar­ship; and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing Yid­dish books, the first man­date of the Yid­dish Book Center. 

Mazower’s thought­ful intro­duc­tion con­tex­tu­al­izes not only the exhi­bi­tion and its inten­tions but also the book as imag­ined ​“to enter­tain and inform the widest range of vis­i­tors” and ​“con­nect emo­tion­al­ly through the pow­er of our sto­ry­telling.” By these mea­sures, the book is an extra­or­di­nary suc­cess. Clear­ly writ­ten with min­i­mal jar­gon, Yid­dish: A Glob­al Cul­ture is a per­fect gift to invite neo­phytes into learn­ing about and under­stand­ing the Yid­dish past while gal­va­niz­ing them to imag­ine them­selves in its future. At the end of the book is a use­ful ​“Time­line of Mod­ern Yid­dish Cul­ture” to help read­ers syn­the­size the broad swatch of his­to­ry the book cov­ers. Many read­ers are like­ly to trea­sure repro­duc­tion of the mur­al Yid­dish­land at the begin­ning of the book. . At the Yid­dish Book Cen­ter, the mur­al ​“stretch­es six­ty feet along one end wall”; in the book, it folds out as a gor­geous ren­der­ing of the Yid­dish cul­tur­al world. While the repro­duc­tion is impres­sive, its func­tion as a com­pelling siren call to vis­it the actu­al mur­al in Amherst is even more impressive.

This book sat­is­fies as an object in its own right while tan­ta­liz­ing read­ers to vis­it the phys­i­cal exhi­bi­tion at Yid­dish Book Cen­ter and enter the cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion that Yid­dish Book Cen­ter pre­serves and con­tin­ues to stoke.