The Jes of Capitol Hill A Compendium of Jeish Congressional Members [Hardcover]

In July 2009, following eight months of ballot recounts and court challenges, the celebrity comedian-turned-politician Al Franken took the oath of office as a United States senator from Minnesota. In so doing, as Kurt F. Stone notes in his fascinating new book The Jews of Capitol Hill, Minnesota became the first state in U.S. history to have elected four Jewish senators: Rudy Boschwitz, Paul Wellstone, Norm Coleman and Franken. Even more interesting, notes Stone, is the fact that it was not New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, Pennsylvania or some other state with a large Jewish population to elect four Jewish senators, but Minnesota, whose Jewish population amounted to less than 1 percent. This is only one of the many little-known and surprising facts contained in Stones meticulously researched, well-organized and highly readable compendium of historical facts and biographical information about the Jewish experience in Congress, past and present.If you are interested in Jews and politics, this is a book that should not be missed&.It's fascinating and authoritative and probably the best resource book on Jews in Congress that has ever been written&.Make sure your synagogue library and your public library have this book.New biographies and a new plan of organization highlight this revision of Stone's 2000 publication, Congressional Minyan: The Jews of Capitol Hill (KTAV Pub.). For example, Stone updates the biography of Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who died while in office in October 2002, and profiles Rep. Theodore Deutch of Florida, elected in April 2010. Yet the biggest change is replacing the alphabetical order of profiles with chronological order, by the year of an individual's election. Stone groups the profiles into six generations, aiming to create a political history. A new section with a time line titled What Was Happening introduces each generation. Providing a history of Jewish participation in Congress represents a unique, worthy goal....l³Á