Autobiographical texts are rare in the Sephardi world. Gabriel Arie's writings provide a special perspective on the political, economic, and cultural changes undergone by the Eastern Sephardi community in the decades before its dissolution, in regions where it had been constituted since the expulsion from Spain in 1492. His history is a fascinating memoir of the Sephardi and Levantine bourgeoisie of the time. For his entire life, Arie--teacher, historian, community leader, and businessman--was caught between East and West. Born in a small provincial town in Ottoman Bulgaria in 1863, he...