The Twenty-Three: The Saga of the First Jews in North America

In the middle of the 17th century, 23 refuges from Recife, Brazil found themselves in a backwater hellhole called New Amsterdam. They were the first Jews to set foot on the North American continent. In this book, John Nance starts with the departure of Christopher Columbus to discover a new world and takes the saga to just before the Revolutionary War. Along the way, you meet Asser Levy, the first permanent Jewish citizen of New York and the kings and queens, adventurers, pirates, traders, religious fanatics and downtrodden orphans of greed like Petrus Stuyvesant. The few Jews’ little-known story gives a new angle to an old history and pokes holes in some founding myths. It’s a thorough and thoroughly engrossing tale, told with tongue-in-cheek candor by a writer with no ax to grind except the sharpened edge of truth. Read more