In "Geography of Hope," French sociologist and historian Pierre Birnbaum examines the work of the some of the prominent Jewish social scientists of the past two centuries in order to analyze their range of responses to the tensions between the Enlightenment call for universalism and the reality of Jewish particularism.

Pierre Birnbaum is a leading French historian and sociologist. His works available in English include The Heights of Power: An Essay on the Power Elite in France (1982), States and Collective Action: The European Experience (1988), Anti-Semitism in France: A Political History from Leon Blum to the Present (1992), The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews of France from Gambetta to Vichy (Stanford, 1996), Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France (2000), The Idea of France (2001), and The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898 (2003).