A comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century--from her childhood in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to her years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that formed around her in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Scion of a distinguished prewar Viennese Jewish family and son of the chief rabbi of Zurich, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) was a philosopher of religion and scholar of Judaism and the New Testament whose career and public life intersected with that of many of the luminaries of postwar continental European and American intellectual life in the humanities. In a life that took him to teaching posts in Jerusalem, New York, Paris, and Berlin, he became a repository...