The Golden Age of Italian Jews by Gino Segrè covers the nine decades from 1848 to 1938 during which Italian Jews rose from their socially constrained ghetto life to acquire full civil rights and eventually to occupy commanding positions in Italian society. Never more than one tenth of one percent of the total Italian population, Jews became army generals, mayors of major cities, prime ministers, foreign secretaries, and high-ranking university professors.

Segrè explains what made this meteoric rise possible, relating how Jews negotiated their futures with a three-step process: seizing opportunities to gain acceptance, excelling in their trades and professions, and often successfully assimilating into the upper strata of Italian society. By the early twentieth century, Jews were integral to Italian life, but all of their progress came to a sudden cataclysmic end in 1938 with the institution of Italy’s racial laws by the fascist government.

Segrè includes several illustrative anecdotes from his family’s history. One tells of his great-grandfather Marco Treves, who was born in 1814. Treves became an architect, a career path previously closed to Jews: he worked in Rome and Paris before settling in Florence. There, ever a pious Jew, he reached the pinnacle of his career, designing the city’s grand new synagogue and cemetery. His favorite daughter, the author's grandmother Amelia Treves Segrè, was caught in a 1943 Nazi roundup in Rome and transported to Auschwitz where she died.

Clear and concise, The Golden Age of Italian Jews conveys the dramatic rise and brutal fall of Jews in Italy. It is a poignant and important story.