I am a first-generation American, born, like the nation, in Philadelphia, the child of refugees from European barbarism. Both my parents, in their separate youths, escaped the Nazi effort to murder all Jews; many in my family were not so lucky. I knew this fact, in some form, from as early in my life as I remember knowing anything significant. To a degree, I derived pride and a sense of romance from the distinctiveness of this awful yet dramatic heritage: I was glad to have a story that gave shape and meaning to my origins, and thereby provided me with a consciousness of destiny. I understood that my life belonged not only to me but to the course of history.

Yet the story, ...