Almost seven decades have passed since the great book collector Rosenbach published An American Jewish Bibliography: Being a List of Books and Pamphlets by Jews or Relating to Them Printed in the United States from the Establishment of the Press in the Colonies Until 1850. Three supplements to Rosenbach have been published and two preliminary bibliographies aimed at carrying his list forward from 1851 to 1875 have been complied. But none of these bibliographers went as far as Singerman did in attempting to identify all of the libraries where a given work might be found, and, until now, no one thought to create a cumulative listing of publications.

Robert Singerman, already recognized as one of America's leading bibliographers of Jewish Studies, has produced a wholly new American Jewish bibliography, incorporating all of the existing supplements to Rosenbach, adding materials discovered since 1971, listing the major libraries where titles are available, and carrying the bibliography to 1900. This important new work brings under control a significant body of printed monographic and serial literature pertaining to Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture published in the United States, in any language, through the year 1900. Taken as a whole, it provides extensive documentation of American Jewish communal activity and, equally important for the study of Jewish-Christian relations, hundreds of titles are included as relevant primary sources for assessing Christian attitudes on the development, history, and testimony of the Jewish religion and the Jewish nation from early times to the close of the nineteenth century, Another important feature of this bibliography is the inclusion of standard National Union Catalog symbols for locations of copies at selected institutions and in geographically dispersed collections, giving librarians, researchers, and collectors a sense of the availability and rarity of individual items. Singerman personally examined the vast majority of the items he included to ensure the accuracy of every citation. He also provides detailed indexes to facilitate a wide range of scholarly research. The result--more than 6,500 entries and almost 10 times the size of Rosenbach's effort and half a century longer in scope--stands as a remarkable bibliographical achievement.