Returning, p.43
Returning, page 43
Theodor Herzl and, 154, 204, 352
Thomas Lemann’s resistance to, 251–53, 278–79
Zukerberg, Nathan, 249–50, 259, 260
Also by Nicholas Lemann
Transaction Man:
The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream
Redemption:
The Last Battle of the Civil War
The Big Test:
The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
The Promised Land:
The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America
About the Author
Nicholas Lemann, a fifth-generation Louisianan, was born and raised in New Orleans. He started his career in journalism there as a seventeen-year-old reporter for an alternative weekly paper, the Vieux Carre Courier. He has been writing magazine articles and books since then. His journalistic home for more than twenty-five years has been The New Yorker, where he usually covers politics. From 2003 to 2013 he was dean of the Columbia Journalism School. He is a professor there now and also directs a publishing venture called Columbia Global Reports.
Lemann’s books use reportage, archival research, and intellectual history to bring to light major and under-chronicled changes in American life: the great Black migration from the rural South to the urban North (The Promised Land), the development of a formal meritocratic system (The Big Test), the violent overthrow of Reconstruction (Redemption), and the ascent of the financial system to dominance of the economy (Transaction Man).
The father of three sons and a daughter, he lives in New York City with his wife, the author and critic Judith Shulevitz.
Copyright © 2026 by Nicholas Lemann
All rights reserved
First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
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Jacket design: Evan Gaffney
Jacket photographs: (front, clockwise from top left) The extended Hyman family on vacation; Thomas, Nancy, and Nicholas Lemann; Jacob Lemann; Monte and Mildred Lemann; the B. Lemann & Brother department store in Donaldsonville; the Wickersham Commission; Barbara Lemann; Adrien Marie Persac’s map of Mississippi River plantations; Nettie Lemann. Central image: Isidore Newman’s house on St. Charles Avenue. (back) Nicholas Lemann in the early 1960s; Thomas Lemann. (The B. Lemann & Brother department store) Carol M. Highsmith, 1946 / Library of Congress; (Isidore Newman’s house on St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans) Penta Springs Limited / Alamy Images. All other images from the Lemann Family Archive
Book design by Barbara Bachman
Production manager: Gwen Cullen
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN 978-1-63149-841-1
ISBN 978-1-63149-842-8 (ebook)
Liveright Publishing Corporation, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS
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Extended image description for Figure 1
Genealogical chart of the Lemann family, illustrating their lineage across several generations. At the top, Jacob Lemann from 1809 to 1887 is linked to Marie Estelle Berthelot from 1821 to 1878 as the progenitors. Their descendants include Bernard Lemann from 1841 to 1899 married to Harriett Friedheim from 1850 to 1897, and Myer Lemann from 1858 to 1930 married to Carrie Abraham from 1869 to 1927 and Coralie Lemann from 1862 to 1954 married to Lazard Kahn from 1850 to 1928. Bernard and Harriett’s child, Montefiore Mordecai Lemann from 1884 to 1959, is married to Nettie Elise Hyman from 1893 to 1946. Alice Lemann from 1889 to 1989, the child of Myer and Carrie, is married to Leo Fellman from 1878 to 1934. Montefiore Mordecai Lemann’s offspring are Thomas Berthelot Lemann from 1926 to 2023 who is married to Barbara Mann London from 1926 to 1999, and Stephen Berthelot Lemann from 1930 to 1995.Alice Lemann’s offspring Mary Anna Fellman from 1913 to 2009 is married to Julian Beck Feibelman from 1897 to 1980. Thomas Berthelot Lemann is the parent of Nicholas Berthelot Lemann from 1954 and Nancy Elise Lemann from 1956.
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Nicholas Lemann, Returning
