No episode in the history of the twentieth century has been investigated more thoroughly than the Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe”: and one of its most thorough investigators has been Saul Friedländer. Reviewing his monumental new volume covering The Years of Extinction, 1939–45 (which follows the earlier Years of Persecution, 1997), Peter Pulzer finds that Friedländer,drawing on German documentation but also on the “extraordinary wealth of chronicles, diaries and letters” written by Jewish victims and by civilians, soldiers and collaborators, reaches a greater understanding than ever before not just of the anti-Semitic ideology that drove the Nazi machine but of the “eclectic” appeal of National Socialism: “Not everyone who admired Hitler bought the whole package”.

One of the most remarkable literary and artistic figures to have lived through those terrible times, the now largely unread, self-proclaimed genius Gertrude Stein, is – along with her partner Alice B. Toklas – the subject of a new book by the renowned New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm. Our reviewer Justin Beplate finds the book asking, indeed, “how it was that this pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis, after electing to remain in Vichy France” throughout the war, and looks behind the pair’s near-silence on the matter of their own Jewish identity.

Among the artists Stein befriended and supported was Pablo Picasso, whose famous portrait of her graces our cover; and Patrick McCaughey has no hesitation in proclaiming John Richardson’s pen-portrait of the great painter “a masterpiece of our time”. Volume Three covers the years 1917–32: the years of Picasso’s first marriage, of friendships with Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau among others, of his embourgeoisement and emancipation.“It is an exceptional life that can stand 1,500 pages devoted to its first half-century and leave the reader wanting more.”

© Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.