&"In Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America, Samantha Baskind reimages the careers of five well-known modern American artists by training a focus on their mostly little-known, but more than occasional, adaptation of biblical narrative and imagery, both Old& and New Testament&based. Articulating a profound Jewish connection between painters and sculptors not necessarily considered in tandem under any other rubric, Baskind delineates connective paradoxes underscored by the purposeful adaptation of biblical interpretation (midrash) in the career trajectory of each. She argues, in these five case studies, that the freedom of America&'s secular society enabled re-presentation of ancient archetypes and that these, in turn, provided different but equally important cues for 'navigating modernity.&' Baskind&'s new book opens a number of avenues to a wider interpretation of visual art&'s role in ongoing debates on ethnicity, gender, and multiculturalism&-topics increasingly relevant today. Art historians, Judaic studies scholars, and anyone interested in investigating the American Jewish experience through a twentieth-century lens will profit from reading it.&" &-Ellen G. Landau, Case Western Reserve University.