Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Medallions | 1946 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 2 | Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt | 2010 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 3 | Moses Mendelssohn | 2010 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 4 | Emma Goldman | 2011 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 5 | Hank Greenberg | 2011 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 6 | Solomon | 2011 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 7 | Leon Trotsky | 2011 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 8 | Franz Kafka | 2012 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 9 | Walther Rathenau | 2012 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 10 | Moshe Dayan | 2012 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 11 | Jacob | 2012 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 12 | Bernard Berenson | 2013 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 13 | Primo Levi | 2013 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 14 | Becoming Freud | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 15 | Lillian Hellman | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 16 | Rav Kook | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 17 | Jabotinsky | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 18 | David | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 19 | Leonard Bernstein | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 20 | Ben-Gurion | 2014 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 21 | Mark Rothko | 2015 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 22 | Einstein | 2015 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 23 | Léon Blum | 2015 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 24 | Peggy Guggenheim | 2015 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 25 | Proust | 2015 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 26 | Groucho Marx | 2016 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 27 | Disraeli | 2016 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 28 | Barbra Streisand | 2016 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 29 | Louis D. Brandeis | 2016 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 30 | Moses | 2016 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 31 | Warner Bros | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 32 | Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 33 | Hayim Nahman Bialik | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 34 | Yitzhak Rabin | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 35 | Rabbi Akiva | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 36 | Julius Rosenwald | 2017 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 37 | Harvey Milk | 2018 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 38 | Gershom Scholem | 2018 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 39 | Menasseh ben Israel | 2018 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 40 | Jerome Robbins | 2018 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 41 | Ben Hecht | 2019 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 42 | Martin Buber | 2019 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 43 | Alfred Stieglitz | 2019 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 44 | Karl Marx | 2019 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 45 | Irving Berlin | 2019 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 46 | Theodor Herzl | 2020 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 47 | Houdini | 2020 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 48 | Stan Lee | 2020 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 49 | Stanley Kubrick | 2020 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 50 | Heinrich Heine | 2020 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 51 | Bugsy Siegel | 2021 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 52 | Man Ray | 2021 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 53 | Judah Benjamin | 2021 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 54 | Abraham Joshua Heschel | 2021 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 55 | Admiral Hyman Rickover | 2022 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 56 | Becoming Elijah | 2022 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 57 | Ruth | 2022 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 58 | Sidney Reilly | 2022 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 59 | Arthur Miller | 2022 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 60 | Mel Brooks | 2023 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 61 | Maimonides | 2023 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 62 | Elie Wiesel | 2023 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 63 | Amos Oz | 2023 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
| 64 | Henrietta Szold | 2024 | Mark Kurlansky | Buy |
Jewish Lives is a biography series published by Yale University Press. Each volume is a short, focused biography of a major Jewish historical figure written by a leading scholar or author. The series has covered figures from biblical times through the modern era, spanning politics, art, science, religion, and entertainment.
Subjects range from Moses and King David to Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein, Barbra Streisand, and Stan Lee. Mark Kurlansky wrote the volume on Hank Greenberg (2011), the baseball star who faced antisemitism during his career. The series has grown to over 60 volumes since its launch in 2010 and continues to add new entries.