Where the Jews Aren't

Fascinating topic, but I don't think Gessen did it justice. She spent more time on one individual who helped promote Birobidzhan than on what life was like for the Jews who moved there. The chapter about the Stalinist purges in the late 1940s and early 1950s was horrific, and actually the prologue and epilogue in which the author talks about her own family's experience leaving Russia in the early 1980s had more energy than most of the chapters about Birobidzhan. The book made me want to learn more about this little-known, short-lived community, so I guess that means it was at least moderately successful.