Through music, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God opens a window onto the cultural and political history of Central Asia in Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet times. Narrated as a travelogue, the book presents the author’s encounters with musicians in Tashkent, Bukhara, Khorezm, the mountains and valleys of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—and Queens, New York, where many Bukharan Jewish musicians have emigrated