BIJAN BAYNE (bijanc@hotmail.com) sent this information about the Mordecai family. Editorial Reviews >From Publishers Weekly In 1815, Alfred Mordecai, the son of a middle-class Jewish family from Warrenton, N.C., applied as a cadet to West Point, "a bold bid for a Jew." Despite high odds, Alfred was accepted-another step in the complex assimilation of the Mordecai family into U.S. society. Bingham, an independent scholar, draws on a large cache of letters and journals written by members of the Mordecai family and a wealth of other published material, to piece together a detailed history of this remarkable Southern Jewish clan. The Mordecais' history is deftly charted through thee generations beginning with Jacob and Judith moving to Virginia from Philadelphia in 1785, through Jacob's founding, with his grown children, of a renowned primary school and the conversion to Christianity of some family members during the Second Great Awakening of the mid-19th century. From there, Bingham follows the family sundering that occurred in the 1860s, when most of the family supported the Confederacy, and Alfred, refusing either to side with them or to support the war in any way, resigned from the Union army. But as thrilling as this family history is, Bingham's great feat here is to show, through the social, political and religious evolutions of one family, how class, race, ethnicity, region and intellectual affiliation profoundly affected assimilation in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Bingham's prose is as fluid as fiction, but she never sacrifices historical insight for narrative drive or soft-pedals such uncomfortable material as the Mordecais owning slaves. This is an important addition not only to Jewish studies but to the literature on family and gender relations in the 19th century. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809027569/002-2216966-2380060?v=glance&s=books"> Hardcover</A> edition. >From <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/booklist.html/002-2216966-2380060">Booklist</A> Encompassing the Revolutionary War, which formed the nation, and the Civil War, which split it in two, this engrossing book tells the story of three generations of a lower-middle-class Jewish family that settled first in Virginia and later in North Carolina. Drawing on thousands of vibrant letters, diaries, and journals, Bingham offers a portrait of the Mordecai clan, who, as one of them wrote, were determined to become a "little faithful band of love and duty," guided by affection,... <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0809070162/reviews/002-2216966-2380060#08090701625123">read more</A> --This text refers to the <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809027569/002-2216966-2380060?v=glance&s=books">Hardcover</A> edition. Book Description An Intimate Portrait of a Jewish American Family in America's First Century Mordecai is a brilliant multigenerational history at the forefront of a new way of exploring our past, one that follows the course of national events through the relationships that speak most immediately to us-between parent and child, sibling and sibling, husband and wife. In Emily Bingham's sure hands, this family of southern Jews becomes a remarkable window on the struggles all Americans were engaged in during the early years of the republic. Following Washington's victory at Yorktown, Jacob and Judy Mordecai settled in North Carolina. Here began a three generational effort to match ambitions to accomplishments. Against the national backdrop of the Great Awakenings, Nat Turner's revolt, the free-love experiments of the 1840s, and the devastation of the Civil War, we witness the efforts of each generation's members to define themselves as Jews, patriots, southerners, and most fundamentally, middle-class Americans. As with the nation's, their successes are often partial and painfully realized, cause for forging and rending the ties that bind child to parent, sister to brother, husband to wife. And through it all, the Mordecais wrote-letters, diaries, newspaper articles, books. Out of these rich archives, Bingham re-creates one family's first century in the United States and gives this nation's early history a uniquely personal face.