No image of prerevolutionary Russian Jewish life is more iconic than the fiddler on the roof. But in the half century before 1917, Jewish musicians were actually descending from their shtetl roofs and streaming in dazzling numbers to Russia's new classical conservatories. At a time of both rising anti-Semitism and burgeoning Jewish nationalism, how and why did Russian music become the gateway to Jewish modernity in music? Drawing on previously unavailable archives, this book offers an insightful new perspective on the emergence of Russian Jewish culture and identity.

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The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire has been awarded the 2011 University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies for outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the fields of literary and cultural studies.

Long Listed for the 2012 Historia Nova Prize for the Best Book on Russian Intellectual History.

James Loeffler is Assistant Professor of Jewish History, Corcoran Department of History, at the University of Virginia.

"A meticulously researched study... a compelling historical narrative." Klara Moricz, Slavic Review