What You Did Not Tell

“Mark Mazower is a great historian and a subtle writer always attentive to humane detail.” —Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

“Within the experience of a single family can be seen the forces that shaped whole nations and peoples…Mark Mazower, a distinguished British-born historian, explores the story of his own family, especially that of his paternal grandparents, Jews who emerged at the turn of the twentieth century from the poverty and backwardness of the Russian provinces into the ferment of socialist struggle and, eventually, into the turmoil of the wider world.”—Wall Street Journal

“Unusual and exceptionally interesting…[Mazower] excavates, through rigorous research and tenacious sleuthing, the history of a family whose lives spanned the entire twentieth century, and whose fates were closely interwoven with its many ideological terrors and violent upheavals.” —New York Review of Books

“A fascinating and scholarly reconstruction of a family’s life and the myriad relations, friends, acquaintances, places, houses, and adventures that spin out from it…What You Did Not Tell is proof of what historical research can yield, providing you have the determination, skill and boundless curiosity to pursue it to the bitter end.” —The Guardian

“‘How is it that the places we live in come to feel that they are ours?’ a noted historian asks in this exacting memoir…Mazower, plowing through letters, diaries, and archives, finds that his grandfather’s story encompasses many of the horrors of twentieth-century Europe.” —The New Yorker

“Many families have stories that are passed down to the next generation, but Mazower has gone beyond storytelling and legend. He has repaid the debt to those who went before him.” —Jerusalem Post

“An enchanting, beautifully written memoir…There are few historians who can write as grippingly as Mazower about secrets and the painstaking work of revealing them.” —Financial Times