Following what may be conventionally called the Jewish ethno-cultural model and tracing its performance throughout history, Alexander Militarev's book is the first scholarly attempt to apply a synthetic, comprehensive approach to the Jewish phenomenon -- an alternative to the metaphysical and religious ones -- and to evaluate it in the comparative context. In highlighting the unique and disproportionately great Jewish contributions (and the recent Russian Jewish contribution, in particular) to the human civilisation, it poses as its main question: "Why the Jews?" Militarev dedicates his book to the analysis of the Jewish phenomenon, its manifold reasons and consequences, couched as an essay replete with unexpected conclusions and debatable hypotheses. Laying bare the "kitchen" of scholarly research, Militarev embarks on a scholarly adventure akin to a film-noir who-dunnit, complete with intrigue, the need for stringent self-control, inexorable doubts, the thrill of the chase after the enigma's solution.