This is an Eng­lish-lan­guage abridge­ment of the orig­i­nal two-vol­ume anthol­o­gy of Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture pub­lished by the Con­gress for Jew­ish Cul­ture in 1999 and 2002. 

It includes poet­ry, short sto­ries, and essays from a vari­ety of the best Yid­dish writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry, from Edelsh­tat and Tsun­z­er to Korn and Singer. Each author is intro­duced with a few sen­tences, fol­lowed by selec­tions from their work. While the book seems designed to intro­duce non-Yid­dish speak­ing read­ers to many of the themes of Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture — per­se­cu­tion, pogroms, immi­gra­tion, assim­i­la­tion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty— the uneven­ness of the trans­la­tions does a dis­ser­vice to some writ­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the poets.