"The great novelist Joseph Roth, in the last years of Weimar Germany, set out to explore the Jewish communities scattered across Europe and America. He wrote about them in his tightly-packed, understated style, and brought back reports of hope, poverty, fear and persecution. He travelled to Poland, France and Austria and the Soviet Union. He witnessed the twilight years of the shtetls and schools of Eastern Europe and foresaw the dangers posed by extreme German nationalism. This is the first translation of Roth's non-fiction to appear in English. It will confirm his ever growing reputation as a neglected master of twentieth-century literature." - from the dust jacket.