Abstract
Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal offers a much-needed and unique historical perspective on the modern American Jewish landscape. While works such as American Judaism by Jonathan Sarna and Jews of the United States by Hasia Diner provide valuable portraits that cover the panorama of Jewish history in the United States, Dana Kaplan offers a study that focuses on the contemporary state of American Jewish life. His narrative of present-day American Judaism is always placed in an informed historical context and his analysis of developments in American Judaism over the last sixty years is designed to engage the reader. Indeed,