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The Professor And The Fossil: Some Observations On Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study Of History
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
268 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1956
14 people want to read
About the author
Maurice Samuel
61 books8 followersMaurice Samuel (February 8, 1895 – May 4, 1972) was a Romanian-born British and American novelist, translator and lecturer.
Born in Măcin, Tulcea County, Romania, to Isaac Samuel and Fanny Acker, Samuel moved to Paris with his family at the age of five and about a year later to England where he studied at the Victoria University. His parents spoke Yiddish at home and he developed strong attachments to the Jewish people and the Yiddish language at early age. This later became the motivation for many of the books he wrote as an adult. Eventually, he left England. Samuel emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1917.
A Jewish intellectual and writer, he is best known for his work You Gentiles, published in 1924. Most of his work concerns Judaism or the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction, such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place during the Borgias' rule of Renaissance Italy, and the fantasy science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch". He and his work received acclaim within the Jewish community during his lifetime, including the 1944 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his non-fiction work, The World of Sholom Aleichem. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature posthumously in 1972.
He died in 1972 in New York City.
Born in Măcin, Tulcea County, Romania, to Isaac Samuel and Fanny Acker, Samuel moved to Paris with his family at the age of five and about a year later to England where he studied at the Victoria University. His parents spoke Yiddish at home and he developed strong attachments to the Jewish people and the Yiddish language at early age. This later became the motivation for many of the books he wrote as an adult. Eventually, he left England. Samuel emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1917.
A Jewish intellectual and writer, he is best known for his work You Gentiles, published in 1924. Most of his work concerns Judaism or the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction, such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place during the Borgias' rule of Renaissance Italy, and the fantasy science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch". He and his work received acclaim within the Jewish community during his lifetime, including the 1944 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his non-fiction work, The World of Sholom Aleichem. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature posthumously in 1972.
He died in 1972 in New York City.
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August 9, 2023
07/30/2023: I unhauled this book from my shelves.
03/29/2021: So I finally know what this book is about! It's basically a criticism of a relatively prevalent-at-the-time history book - well, books because there are many, many, many volumes - called A Study of History and authored by a Professor Arnold J. Toynbee. Basically, Toynbee called the Jewish people a "fossil" and Maurice Samuel got so mad he wrote a whole book about it (which is fair, but like, a sixty page essay could've sufficed too, yeah?).
At first I was really enjoying this criticism because Samuel's voice reminds me of my own in old college papers + he's quite funny when he pokes fun at Toynbee's illogical account of history, although he also goes a bit too far with his comments sometimes as he attacks Toynbee personally quite a bit instead of sticking to simply criticizing his work. My main issue, however, is that Samuel is not as objective as he seems to think he is: while it's very wrong for Toynbee to paint Jewish history with a possibly Protestant brush that doesn't give them the respect or accuracy expected out of a factual historical account, it also feels a bit odd for Samuel to rebut Toynbee by putting the Jewish people on a pedestal and poking at Protestants — essentially, both these authors are biased according to their own beliefs. It is natural, perhaps, but not something that should unquestionably belong in such academic texts. After reading this, I feel more familiar with Samuel's perspective of Jewish history than actual Jewish history, which is probably how he felt while reading Toynbee's 1000+, if not thousands+, page work (which honestly takes the cake for hate reading lolll).
03/05/2021: This is the other half of the 2-piece decorative set I got from Home Goods. This one seems to be non-fiction; I read the first chapter just to see how much of a bore this would be (I'm a bit allergic to non-fiction, especially in the print form) but it's actually not too bad. It seems to be a sort of commentary on Nazi Germany centering around Jewish people — or perhaps that's just chapter one and it's simply about the Jewish people in general.
[On page 14.]
03/29/2021: So I finally know what this book is about! It's basically a criticism of a relatively prevalent-at-the-time history book - well, books because there are many, many, many volumes - called A Study of History and authored by a Professor Arnold J. Toynbee. Basically, Toynbee called the Jewish people a "fossil" and Maurice Samuel got so mad he wrote a whole book about it (which is fair, but like, a sixty page essay could've sufficed too, yeah?).
At first I was really enjoying this criticism because Samuel's voice reminds me of my own in old college papers + he's quite funny when he pokes fun at Toynbee's illogical account of history, although he also goes a bit too far with his comments sometimes as he attacks Toynbee personally quite a bit instead of sticking to simply criticizing his work. My main issue, however, is that Samuel is not as objective as he seems to think he is: while it's very wrong for Toynbee to paint Jewish history with a possibly Protestant brush that doesn't give them the respect or accuracy expected out of a factual historical account, it also feels a bit odd for Samuel to rebut Toynbee by putting the Jewish people on a pedestal and poking at Protestants — essentially, both these authors are biased according to their own beliefs. It is natural, perhaps, but not something that should unquestionably belong in such academic texts. After reading this, I feel more familiar with Samuel's perspective of Jewish history than actual Jewish history, which is probably how he felt while reading Toynbee's 1000+, if not thousands+, page work (which honestly takes the cake for hate reading lolll).
03/05/2021: This is the other half of the 2-piece decorative set I got from Home Goods. This one seems to be non-fiction; I read the first chapter just to see how much of a bore this would be (I'm a bit allergic to non-fiction, especially in the print form) but it's actually not too bad. It seems to be a sort of commentary on Nazi Germany centering around Jewish people — or perhaps that's just chapter one and it's simply about the Jewish people in general.
[On page 14.]
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