We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara
Product Description Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg. A National Book Award Finalist The extraordinary story of how the vatican's imprisonment of a six-year-old Jewish boy in 1858 helped to bring about the collapse of the popes' worldly power in Italy. Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition bust inside and seize Mortara's six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father's arms, his mother collapses. The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly "baptized" by a family servant. According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed. With this terrifying scene, prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer begins the true story of how one boy's kidnapping became a pivotal event in the collapse of the Vatican as a secular power. The book evokes the anguish of a modest merchant's family, the rhythms of daily life in a Jewish ghetto, and also explores, through the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi and such personages as Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state. Moving and informative, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara reads as both a historical thriller and an authoritative analysis of how a single human tragedy changed the course of history. Review "A thrilling history... Kertzer's careful scholarship and fine narrative skill make a great drama." --Boston Globe"A lucidly drawn, dramatic narrative. Kertzer's account reads like a courtroom drama. As shapely and surprising as fiction." --Newsday"Brilliant... a book that has all the merits of a historical thriller." --Daily News"Fascinating... full of rich material.... Kertzer has unearthed an evocative and unjustly forgotten episode of history." --The Washington Post Book World "A gripping, vivid and well-documented rendering. A highly readable work that is dramatic, moving and informative, as interesting to general readers as it will no doubt prove to historians." --San Francisco Chronicle "David Kertzer tells a riveting take, with great mastery of the sources." --The New York Review of Books "David Kertzer's account of this extraordinary but largely forgotten moment in history is told with verve. Sounding much like a conventuonal thriller writer, Kertzer combines a gripping yarn with a details historical reconstruction." --Financial Times "A spellbinding and intelligent book. The story itself isutterly compelling, but is entirely Kertser's skill as a historian and a writer that allows him to maintain the suspense.... Deftly constructed." --Toronto Globe and Mail "I read the book, all of it, cover to cover, nonstop, gasping, amazed. What an important and spectacular work! (With the narrative pace of a gripping novel.) One of the most impressive reading nights of my life." --Cynthia Ozick"A scrupulously researched, elegantly written narrative that deftly combines the take of one family's anguished and fruitless efforts to reclaim their child and the stirring saga of the Risorgimento." --The Jerusalem Report From the Inside Flap National Book Award Finalist Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene--one that would haunt this family forever--David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and shows how the deep-rooted antisemitism of the Catholic Church would eventually contribute to the collapse of its temporal power in Italy. As Edgardo's parents desperately search for a way to get their son back, th
