Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams - Hardcover

Italian merchants, Greek freedom fighters, and Turkish seamen; a Russian empress and her favorite soldier-bureaucrats; Jewish tavern keepers, traders, and journalists-these and many others seeking fortune and adventure rubbed shoulders in Odessa, the greatest port on the Black Sea. Here a dream of cosmopolitan freedom inspired geniuses and innovators, from Alexander Pushkin and Isaac Babel to Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky and immunologist Ilya Mechnikov. Yet here too was death on a staggering scale: not only the insidious plagues common to seaports but also the mass murder of Jews carried out by the Romanian occupation during World War II. Drawing on a wealth of original source material, Odessa is an elegy for the vibrant, multicultural tapestry of which a thriving Jewish population formed an essential part, as well as a celebration of the survival of Odessa's dream in a diaspora reaching all the way to Brighton Beach.

Charles King is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. A frequent media commentator on global issues, he is the author of Odessa, Midnight in the Pera Palace, and other books. He lives in Washington, DC.