Bernard Wasserstein is the Ulrich and Harriet Meyer Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago. He has taught at Brandeis and Glasgow universities and from 1996 to 2000 was president of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Award in 2008, he is this year (2011–12) a guest fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies. His previous books include The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln, which was awarded the Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction by the Crime Writers’ Association, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945, and Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time.