Bio
Max Isaac Dimont was born on the 12th of August, 1912, in Helsinki, Finland. Dimont was a prominent Finish American historian and a very capable writer in the genre of history. Max was raised in a primarily Jewish family in Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland. However, when Dimont was aged sixteen, he, his mother, and his brothers and sisters, all immigrated to the United States of America.
Upon the family’s arrival to the United States, Max was immediately sent to a hospital, Ellis Island hospital to be precise, after he had been noted as suffering from simple goiter. Two days prior to Max’s seventeenth birthday, he was discharged and the family went to Cleveland, Ohio, where they lived for the majority of their life together.
Best Max I. Dimont Books
Legacy
Max served in the United States Army intelligence during the second World War, and after finishing up his duty in the war, he began working for Edison Brothers Stores in St. Louis, Missouri, in the human resources section.
Unfortunately, in 1992, on the 25th of March, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dimont fell ill and died shortly after. He had been working on his ‘magnum opus’, which sadly he never got to finish. Notwithstanding all that, he still left behind himself a lofty career. Thus, we can take a look at the best Max Isaac Dimont books.
Jews, God, and History
Herculean Task
Herculean TaskDimont’s wonderful books Jews, God, and History was first published in the year of 1962. The work is, without a doubt, a superbly phenomenal achievement. By attempting to clear out any confusion and trace out the extremely long – 4,000-year-old – history of the Jewish people, Dimont has set up a Herculean task in front of him. However, if anyone is familiar with Dimont, if anyone is capable of doing so, it might as well be Dimont.
Unlike other attempts at tracing history of a certain people, Dimont doesn’t just follow the Jewish people and say what happened at this precise year and what at that one. Instead, he shows us how the Jewish people’s history progressed in context with the whole wide world. We see that the Jewish people were present in most if not all facets of life, throughout all of history that they’ve existed.
Objective Prism
Never does Dimont fall into dry writing or academic snobbery. Being a Jewish-descendant, himself, Dimont doesn’t hold an ostentatious view, but speaks of everything through an objective prism. As such events were of importance to history, thus to the history of the Jews, Dimont describes how the rise and prominence of Christianity and Islam impacted the Jewish people’s lives and their history.
Accordingly, Dimont doesn’t let any religious views get ahead of him. What happened on which mountain, wherefrom certain tablets come, whether a bush was burnt or an illusion was at play, it isn’t that important to the whole picture. What is, is the fact that that certain person was significant in that time, therefore they changed the history of the Jews henceforth. Absolutely brilliant and without a doubt one of the best Max Isaac Dimont books.
The Indestructible Jews
Obstacles and Challenges
Unlike the author’s brilliant outing in Jews, God, and History, which spoke of the Jewish people in context of the world’s history, The Indestructible Jews is more of a primer on how the Jews’ four-thousand-year-old history has gone on, what obstacles and challenges they have faced, and how they are the only people to have survived for so long.
Survival
The story is as almost as old as history itself. For one, there are scarcely any historical accounts that precede the Jewish people. We must concede to the fact that no one people can survive and go on for more than four millenniums without bearing something special about themselves. What this intrinsically special feature is, we cannot say. Nevertheless, we concur to the fact that they are an extremely important part of history, itself.
Trials and Tribulations
Dimont traces the people’s introduction to the world from the age-old and plaint belief from a small tribe to a religion that has believers and adherents in most of the world. We go through their many exiles, migrations, trials, tribulations, the abject horror of the Holocaust, up until the creation and founding of their very own homeland in Israel. Dimont doesn’t disappoint in this entrée, either, as his book is a timeless one. Very much recommended!
The Amazing Adventures of the Jewish People
Acts and Adventures
Acts and AdventuresPublished in 1984, Dimont’s The Amazing Adventures of the Jewish People is a book like none other. It does in a breezy two-hundred pages what most books can’t in double that. Perhaps, it might be the best Max Isaac Dimont book, because of this.
The book is divided in a somewhat confusing way, though only when describing it. When one reads the book, everything is much clearer and succinct. Divided into two great parts, referred to as Acts, and these are further divided into their own smaller parts, called Adventures.
Adventures
The first of the Acts traces the first 2,000 years of the Jewish history, going from Abraham up until the very Fall of Masada. The first Adventure of Act 1 follows the odyssey of the Jewish people as nomads, their entrance into Canaan’s land, the venture they had for the greenest of pastures, then their subsequent slavery in Egypt right until they were freed by the prophet Moses. The ending of the first Adventure covers the granting of the Torah by the God at Mount Sinai, along with the first Jewish King’s rule.
The second Adventure follows the kingdoms of David and Solomon, the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, the Prophets’ voices, and finally the devastation of the dual kingdoms at the hands of the Babylonians and the Assyrian people.
Return to Israel
The third Adventure covers the exile they faced in Babylonia, their return to Israel, the reconstruction of Jerusalem, their horrible struggles under Greek and Roman rule, along with the life of Joshua ben Yosef – who to the Jews is Jesus. Act 2 covers the Jews’ history after the Second Temple’s destruction through the 3rd exile of the Jewish people up until the State of Israel’s restoration in the year of 1948.
Michael Englert
Michael is a graduate of cultural studies and history. He enjoys a good bottle of wine and (surprise, surprise) reading. As a small-town librarian, he is currently relishing the silence and peaceful atmosphere that is prevailing.
