Praise for Carrying a Big Schtick:
Mora is a brilliant observer of masculinity, which we often take for granted or assume to be the default mode of being human. Drawing from politics, literature, war, sports, and popular culture, she deftly narrates a story of what it meant to be a man across nearly a century of Jewish life in the US. The story is all the more an achievement because of Mora's ability to weave together its diverse elements: Jewish men's self-representation, other Americans' assumptions, charges of effeminacy, embraces of gentleness, refusals of victimhood, and calls for military prowess are just a few of the historical developments Mora traces. American Jewish history has been waiting for this book.
~Sarah Imhoff (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Carrying a Big Schtick is an impressive work of scholarship. The breadth is outstanding. Mora's command of the material and literature is excellent.
~Mira Sucharov (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
Carrying a Big Schtick is a pleasure to read. The scholarship is sound, the theoretical analysis is both frequently brilliant and always clear, and the writing is effervescent. I recommend it to anyone interested in gender history and theory and, as well, to anyone interested in Jewish life in America.
~Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley)
Historian Mora debuts with a rigorous analysis of American Jewish masculinity ... a trenchant analysis of assimilation and otherness."
~Publishers Weekly
Mora is a brilliant observer of masculinity, which we often take for granted or assume to be the default mode of being human. Drawing from politics, literature, war, sports, and popular culture, she deftly narrates a story of what it meant to be a man across nearly a century of Jewish life in the US. The story is all the more an achievement because of Mora's ability to weave together its diverse elements: Jewish men's self-representation, other Americans' assumptions, charges of effeminacy, embraces of gentleness, refusals of victimhood, and calls for military prowess are just a few of the historical developments Mora traces. American Jewish history has been waiting for this book.
~Sarah Imhoff (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Carrying a Big Schtick is an impressive work of scholarship. The breadth is outstanding. Mora's command of the material and literature is excellent.
~Mira Sucharov (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
Carrying a Big Schtick is a pleasure to read. The scholarship is sound, the theoretical analysis is both frequently brilliant and always clear, and the writing is effervescent. I recommend it to anyone interested in gender history and theory and, as well, to anyone interested in Jewish life in America.
~Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley)
Historian Mora debuts with a rigorous analysis of American Jewish masculinity ... a trenchant analysis of assimilation and otherness."
~Publishers Weekly