Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Great Britain, closes the preface to his memoir with an anecdote about America. He tells of a Jewish friend of his whose mother had emigrated to the United States decades before. When this friend’s mother died, her son discovered, among her small trove of possessions and jewelry, a lockbox that clearly seemed to preserve some sort of treasure—though this woman had never been wealthy, and it was unclear what sort of invaluable object the box could contain: