Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Jewish Lives)

An insightful new biography of the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair, focused on the man himself and based on newly accessible documents “An admirable introduction not only to its nominal subject but to . . . great historical events.”-Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New York Review of Books On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In this book, Maurice Samuels gives readers new insight into Dreyfus himself-the man at the center of the affair.He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil’s Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I. Samuels’s striking perspective is enriched by a newly available archive of more than three thousand documents and objects donated by the Dreyfus family.Unlike many historians, Samuels argues that Dreyfus was