Potok has accomplished an amazing work [in Wanderings]: he has given us a long, well-researched history of the Jewish people, yet he does so with a narrative that is very personal and human. If he seems to scan centuries leaving gaps in the history, he does so because as a self-imposed editor, he must give space to the more important aspects of history which demand space. If he does not know how certain things happened, he offers the reader his own conjecture on the events, and how they came about. He includes the Bible as a record of fact, yet supports the stories within the Bible with a historical perspective. Potok's "wanderings" are passages through the history of his people, and not surprisingly, the peoples of other lands and other cultures.

David Winston York, in his review of "Wanderings," in West Coast Review of Books (copyright 1979 by Rapport...