Hasidism: A New History (Princeton University Press, December 2017), by UC Davis College of Letters and Science's David Biale, the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History, with David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv and Marcin Wodzinski. The first comprehensive history of Hasidism, this book demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, the pietistic movement is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.

David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History with interests that range across the 3,000-year span of that subject. Professor Biale’s research is broadly in the areas of Jewish intellectual and cultural history. He has written on the historian Gershom Scholem, as well as on themes of power, sexuality, blood and secularization in Jewish history. His current project is as director of an international team writing the first history of Hasidism.

View the book at Princeton University Press