The Golden Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe / Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern 431p.

Most everyone has seen a version of Fiddler on the Roof, set in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka.  Petrovsky-Shtern wants to remind us that Anatevka represents the dying days of the many shtetls (or shtetlach) throughout the Pale of Settlement, or western Russia.  The shtetl had a golden age, from approximately 1780 to 1840, when the shtetl territories had only recently been conquered from Poland, and before the rise of a more backward-looking Russification.  Petrovsky-Shtern has done a truly amazing amount of research and assembled an in-depth view of aspects of shtetl life, from trade, home construction, married life, religion, and literacy.  Not exciting but entirely readable; this almost could be considered a stand-alone reference volume.  Coherent and extremely impressive.