Simon Dubnow was born in 1860 to a poor Jewish family in Belarussian town of Mstsislaw and later became authority of Jewish history and an activist. Due to his Jewish origin, he had to move to St.Petersburg, Odessa, Vilna, St.Petersburg, Kaunas, Berlin and finally Riga after Hitler came to power. When Nazi troops occupied Latvia 1941, he was moved with thousands of other Jews to Riga ghetto and was eventually killed. His life is a symbol of Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe in the first half of 20 century. This book is one of the most extensive and thorough study of the glory and suffering of the Jews in Russia and Poland for 2000 years. - Summary by S. S. Kim