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Rating: 
Summary: A Book that is Not About Jews
Review: From the title of the book you think the book is about Jews, however the author puts the Jews he is referencing to down, or he compares them to Jesus. I thought I was getting a book on great Jews. For example the author would talk about Moses, then make comments about Jesus totally for no reason unless he is a "Jew for Jesus". I really do not understand the author's motive, but I learned that you can not judge a book by its cover.
Rating: 
Summary: An informative and quite useful book
Review: Shapiro's broad sweeping work contains rankings of those whom he considers the top 100 Jewish thinkers and movers of western civilization. His book is not designed to be a detailed analysis of these lives but instead, a snap shot commentary on how each individual impacted their area of expertise that influenced their Jewish community and the world. The rankings of course are subjective and arbitrary and are not that helpful as to why one person's contributions is ranked higher than another. One must remember that this work is not an intellectual tome but a nice easy to read book to see who's who in the Jewish world. This work contains many flaws and arouses some serious questions. 1. Very few women are contained in the book. Are we to assume that Jewish women on the whole had very little impact in the western world? 2. Shapiro is a great apologist for Christianity as he glosses over the negative impact of that religion upon Judism. Granted Jesus, Mary, Saul and Judas were Jews but the religion that was spawned from them resulted in a negative impact on Jews world wide. Christians baited Jews as Christ killers, forced conversions upon Jews (inquisition) and through their silence allowed the extermination of 6 million Jews. 3. One of the most important questions is how does one determine who is a Jew? Although many of the names are famous, some were of mixed marriages ( Proust, Bohr, etc.) where Judism was absent in their lives and they converted to Christianity. Also included were those who denied their heritage or were non-practicing. Should they have been included regardless of their Jewish background? In any case this book is a good resource book for young teenagers, young adults and other people who wasnt a broad survey of Jews who impacted upon western civilization
Rating:
Summary: INFLUENTIAL MINDS
Review: Shapiro's broad sweeping work contains rankings of those whom he considers the top 100 Jewish thinkers and movers of western civilization. His book is not designed to be a detailed analysis of these lives but instead, a snap shot commentary on how each individual impacted their area of expertise that influenced their Jewish community and the world. The rankings of course are subjective and arbitrary and are not that helpful as to why one person's contributions is ranked higher than another. One must remember that this work is not an intellectual tome but a nice easy to read book to see who's who in the Jewish world. This work contains many flaws and arouses some serious questions. 1. Very few women are contained in the book. Are we to assume that Jewish women on the whole had very little impact in the western world? 2. Shapiro is a great apologist for Christianity as he glosses over the negative impact of that religion upon Judism. Granted Jesus, Mary, Saul and Judas were Jews but the religion that was spawned from them resulted in a negative impact on Jews world wide. Christians baited Jews as Christ killers, forced conversions upon Jews (inquisition) and through their silence allowed the extermination of 6 million Jews. 3. One of the most important questions is how does one determine who is a Jew? Although many of the names are famous, some were of mixed marriages ( Proust, Bohr, etc.) where Judism was absent in their lives and they converted to Christianity. Also included were those who denied their heritage or were non-practicing. Should they have been included regardless of their Jewish background? In any case this book is a good resource book for young teenagers, young adults and other people who wasnt a broad survey of Jews who impacted upon western civilization
Rating:
Summary: An informative and quite useful book
Review: Unlike one reviewer on this site, I found this book to be a delightful read, and especially appropriate for teenage Jewish readers. This is not heavy reading, rather this is bedtime reading that is both informative ("Did you know so-and-so was Jewish?") and on occasion thought-provoking. Far from being anti-Jewish, as has been implied, I found the book to provoke pride in one's Judaism. And the lighter touches (about the Jewish origins of the inventors of Superman, for example) are much appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Fundamental errors
Review: We live in a world in which there are two billion Christians and around thirteen million Jews. We live in a world after the Holocaust where more than one- third of the Jewish people were murdered. We also live in a world in which the Jewish people are presently under attack from a radical Islamic fundamentalism aimed at destroying the Jewish state of Israel. We live in a world in which thousands of Christian missionaries feel that it is more important to convert the thirteen million Jews than it is to work either on themselves, or on the other four billion people of the planet who are neither Christians or Jews.All this being the case it seems to me that the author had a duty to write a work that would strengthen Jewish identity and peoplehood, and not make it more questionable. Thus it seems to me completely insensitive of the author to put so many founders of Christianity as 'most influential Jews' I think that they belong rather in a book called ' Most Influential Christians'.
Secondly, does it really make much sense to put the creators of Superman in a book with Biblical figures?
Jewish history ( a third point)is filled with remarkable figures who make some of the American pop figures the author chooses small and insignificant.
The author, it seems to me, might better have done a book on the them ( Jews who have done the most good for their own people.)
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