Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire (Russian: Еврейские погромы в России; Hebrew: הסופות בנגב‎ ha-sufot ba-negev; lit. "the storms in the South") were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that first began in the 19th century. Pogroms began occurring after the Russian Empire, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during 1791–1835. These territories were designated "the Pale of Settlement" by the Imperial Russian government, within which Jews were reluctantly permitted to live, and it was within them that the pogroms largely took place. Most Jews were forbidden from moving to other parts of the Empire, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (Russian: Анто́н Ива́нович Дени́кин, IPA: ; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1872 – 8 August 1947) was a Russian Lieutenant General in the Imperial Russian Army (1916) and afterwards a leading general of the White movement in the Russian Civil War.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: Протоколы сионских мудрецов) or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is an antisemitic fabricated text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax, which was shown to be plagiarized from several earlier sources, some not antisemitic in nature,[1] was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the Protocols are the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting where Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish hegemony by subverting the morals of Gentiles, and by controlling the press and the world's economies.

Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s. The Nazis sometimes used the Protocols as propaganda against Jews; it was assigned by some German teachers, as if factual, to be read by German schoolchildren after the Nazis came to power in 1933,[2] despite having been exposed as fraudulent by The Times of London in 1921. It is still widely available today in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by some proponents as a genuine document.

Leo Max Frank(April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915) was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national attention. His lynching two years later, in response to the commutation of his sentence, became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding anti-semitism. Today, the consensus of researchers on the subject holds that Frank was wrongly convicted.

The City of 72 Names covers almost one hundred years of world conflict, technological developments, art and cultural fluorescence and sadly, continuing anti-Semitism. We see a lot of this through the eyes of Moishe, Pinchas, Dovid and Leah Levy but without context, it is difficult to understand how strongly Jews impacted the strong desire of people all over the world to live their lives freely. Judaism teaches a concept called tikkun olam or "repairing the world." Our protagonists were not religious Jews. They were children and young adults when thrust into the world outside of their home and had only the rudiments of Jewish education but they instinctively knew from their parents the need to survive and more than that try to make the world a better place. Even Davey Boy, the American mobster, ends up doing good in his own way.

So, what was happening in the world during the lives of the Levy siblings? Turmoil, conflict, ethnic cleansing, nationalism, war, brilliant intellectual developments, unbelievable advancements in living standards, abject poverty, famine, disease, the passing of old regimes and the rising of new ones; and change, constant change.

• The World during the years 1900 to 1918
• The World between Armistice Day and the Great Depression (1919-1932)
• The World during the Great Depression (1929-1939)
• The World during WWII to the founding of Israel (1939-1948)