The story of the turbulent final sixty years of an important, and in many ways representative, Eastern European Jewish community. "This is a wonderful piece of scholarship that enlightens our understanding of Jewish communal life in Eastern Europe in modern times. What makes the book fascinating is the use of rare materials, including archival documents, unpublished letters, memoirs, rare newspapers in four languages, and conversations with individuals from Pinsk. The book's importance lies in the fact that we are shown in detail how a single city fared from before World War I up until World War II."