The Devil in Babylon: Fear of Progress
and the Birth of Modern Life

From McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2005.

What should the modern world look like? Who should be its leaders? And what values should it embrace? We have never wrestled over these questions more than in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Allan Levine’s newest book chronicles this wide-ranging emotional and moral conflict by focusing on the people who lived through this turbulent era: an array of personalities – traditionalists as well as progressives, the powerful and the powerless – who, for better or worse, shaped the contours of contemporary North American society. Among them were anarchist Emma Goldman, prohibitionist and creationist William Jennings Bryan, women’s rights campaigner Nellie McClung, and gangster Al Capone.

Their personal experiences are set against the heated debate about the impact of immigration, the role of women, the conflict between science and religion, the influence of Hollywood, and the changing attitudes about sex – issues that preoccupied, and even consumed, North Americans of all classes.

“[A] wonderful history of sin in the city in the early 20th century.”
—Globe and Mail

“ A fair-minded, fascinating and well-balanced book.”
—National Post
 
“ Levine has written a fast-paced and abundantly informative study of early twentieth-century social history…His book is a whirlwind tour through the years. It repays reading and re-reading. I wouldn’t have missed a single page. Trust me—you’ll feel the same.”
—Books in Canada
 
“ Levine brings the historical material to vivid life, shining new light on previously well-trodden ground
…. [The Devil in Babylon is] a sterling example of popular history that gives the reader much to think about.”
—Vancouver Sun
 
“ Levine has written an enjoyable, fascinating and readable book….Levine is an excellent storyteller….He writes clearly and evocatively.”
—Winnipeg Free Press"Compelling and gracefully written work of popular history…Levine's portraits of the characters on both sides of the divide are fascinating…The Devil in Babylon is an engrossing and somewhat prophetic book, a reminder that a commitment to social justice and fairness is an evolving covenant."
—Quill and Quire

"Levine has clearly mastered the skill of historical narrative."
—Philip Marchand, Toronto Star

Read an excerpt in the April-May, 2005 issue of The Beaver magazine

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Scattered Among the Peoples: The Jewish Diaspora in Ten Portraits

From McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2002.

Also published as

Scattered Among the Peoples:
The Jewish Diaspora in Twelve Portraits

From The Overlook Press, New York, 2003
and Duckworth Publishers, London, 2003.
Now Available in Trade Paper

FROM SEVILLE IN 1492 to Kiev in 1967, book brings to life ten defining points (and twelve in the U.S./U.K. editions) in the Jewish Diaspora in a series of moment-in-time portraits of individual people, their families and communities, and the cities they inhabited. In addition to Seville, where the story begins with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and Kiev, where the refusenik Jews fought for the right to emigrate to Israel, there is Venice in 1516 and the establishment of the first ghetto, Constantinople in 1666 and the Jewish physicians to the sultans, Amsterdam in 1700 and the glorious rebirth of Sephardic Jewish culture, Vienna in 1730 and the immensely powerful yet vulnerable court Jews, St Petersburg in 1881 and the pogroms inflicted on the shtetls, Paris in 1895 and the Dreyfus scandal, New York in 1913 and the tenement life and culture of the Lower East Side, and the dreadful plight of the Vilna ghetto in 1944. The U.S./U.K. editions also examine Frankfurt in the 1840s during the Age of Emancipation and Berlin in 1925 when there was talk of a German-Jewish ‘symbiosis.’
But the focus of each chapter is the personal and public lives of individuals. A few, such as merchant and poet Don Isaac Abravanel, soldier Alfred Dreyfus, and writer and editor Abraham Cahan, are well known; others, like doctor Moses Hamon, financier Samuel Oppenheimer, and journalist Judah Leib Gordon, are now unjustly forgotten. Their successes or failures as teachers, rabbis, merchants, writers, soldiers, and physicians add a colourful and human dimension to the sprawling saga of the Diaspora.

• Short-listed for the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year, 2003

• Short-listed for the Isbister Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2003

International Praise

• "Bears the mark of the novelist."
  —Quill & Quire

• "Immensely informative and accessible.… Levine's strategy is very clever…Throughout this journey, we encounter a range of mesmerizing characters. … By the book's end [Levine] has managed to weave these separate snapshots into a compelling and devastating portrait."
  —Globe and Mail

• "A tightly focused book…Levine's account is spirited and deft…His skill at recasting familiar history makes this a useful and lively introduction to the subject."
  —Jerusalem Post

• "A fluent recounting of eight centuries [of Jewish history]…Lively portraits of historical figures large and small…"
  —Kirkus

• "[A] sprawling, highly readable historical survey…Levine's account is insightful, informative and great popular history. He has an easy style and can pack a wealth of information into a brief essay…an entertaining and useful book."
  —Publishers Weekly

• "His is a wandering tale that moves from royal courts to backwater towns, form gloried respect to frenzied fear. Above all, it is a saga of survival."
  —Dallas News

• "Levine has given us an exceedingly well-written survey of Jewish history…[The] author [has the] remarkable ability to combine lively popular history with outstanding scholarship."
  —Broward Jewish Journal (Florida)

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Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story
of Jewish Resistance and Survival
During the Second World War

Originally published by Stoddart and now reprinted by
The Lyons Press, an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press

More than fifty years ago, as the Second World War and the Nazi assault on Europe ended, approximately 25,000 Jews, entire families in some instances walked out of the forests of Eastern Europe. For three years, these men, women and children had miraculously survived eluding Nazi hunts and Soviet, Polish, and Ukrainian partisans who often killed first and asked questions later. They had escaped from the Nazi ghettos and slave labour camps and formed secret partisan camps in the surrounding forests. The forest not only protected them, it also became their base for sabotage and resistance efforts against the Germans and their allies.

Based on numerous interviews with the survivors, this book tells the partisans’ harrowing and heroic story. Among them:

• The tale of the Vilna Ghetto
• The tragic resistance struggle of Dr. Yeheskel Atlas
• The bravery and resourcefulness of Misha Gildenman
• The remarkable story of Tuvia Bielski and his rescue of more than 1200 Jews from a certain death

Many of us will ask the troubling question, why did not more Jews resist? But the question should be, how, under the circumstances, was any resistance possible at all?

• Winner of the 1999 Yad Vashem Prize for Holocaust History in Canada
• Short-listed for the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year, 1999
• A selection of the Traditions Book Club in the United States

Praise

• “Allan Levine’s ambitious chronicle…meticulously researched…is a must read for those who wonder about organized Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.”
  —Globe and Mail
• “ [This] book justifies itself historically and morally. Levine’s sober tone is, after all, a retort to the livid obscenity of history."
  —Toronto Star
• “ Allan Levine has written an important book…He tells the story of Jewish armed resistance in Eastern Europe very well. He weaves personal vignettes, often poignant into his narrative…His graphic and gripping account should ensure a wide readership.”
  —Winnipeg Free Press
• “ For those of us who participated in the events detailed in this book, its significance lies in the author’s ability to chronicle our thoughts, our moods, our objectives, our tragedies, and our sufferings, as well as our hopes, dreams, and victories.”
  —Peter Silverman, A Former Partisan

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Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers
and the Media

From Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1993

 

A lively look at the complex relationship between the Prime Ministers of Canada and the media. Based on a year of independent research at the National Archives in Ottawa as well as in other archives and libraries across the country, this book examines the often-strained relationship between Canadian prime ministers and the media from John A. Macdonald to Brian Mulroney. More than 60 interviews were conducted with the who’s who of Ottawa to produce a provocative and insightful survey of how journalists have affected the course of Canadian political history.

Praise

• "Allan Levine has produced a masterful survey of how the media and Canadian prime ministers interact, protect and savage one another"Levine makes a subject that could have been a real snorer read like a detective novel…"
  —Peter C. Newman, Maclean’s

• "It’s about time someone came close to telling the truth…of how the information that voters need to make democratic decisions is harshly brokered between and among politicians, reporters and the owners of the nation’s media outlets…Scrum Wars makes a good start…"
  —Globe and Mail, December 18, 1993
  

• "Allan Levine is quickly emerging as one of the country’s best popular historians…Anyone concerned about the power of the national media…would do well to read Scrum Wars."
  —Prince George Citizen, March 17, 1994

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Early Works

Your Worship: The Lives of Eight of Canada’s Most Unforgettable Mayors
(Editor and contributor).
From James Lorimer & Company, Toronto, 1989

• An entertaining portrait of eight of Canada’s most dynamic civic leaders. As editor, I oversaw the entire project, edited the book and researched and wrote a chapter on former Winnipeg mayor Stephen Juba.

Praise

• "A highly-entertaining flashback."
  —Winnipeg Free Press

• "[Levine] has added a delightful volume to the history of Canadian politics."
  —Ottawa Citizen

• "Levine has compiled an entertaining and informative survey."
  —Alberta Report

The Exchange: 100 Years of Trading Grain in Winnipeg.
From Peguis Publishers, Winnipeg , 1987

• The first book-length study of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange and its role in the history of the Canadian grain trade. Based on two years of research and interviewing in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Chicago.

Praise

• "[Levine] can write with the best of the Canadian journalist-quasi-historians."
  —Vancouver Sun

• "An impressive first work by a promising author."
  —Winnipeg Free Press

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