Review by Choice Review
Lipstadt (modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies, Emory Univ.) has contributed to showing how the Holocaust became an integral part of American life. Drawing on primary and secondary sources as well as interviews, Lipstadt's book details the manner in which the Shoah moved from a little-understood, horrific casualty of WW II to its present impact on American culture, politics, and the US Jewish community. The many events and personalities discussed by Lipstadt include the effect of the Holocaust on the Bitburg controversy, the Rwandian genocide, the bombing of Kosovo, and the debate surrounding the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Significantly, Lipstadt does not overlook the important moral presence of the late Elie Wiesel in many of these events; Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize awardee, was not hesitant to speak truth to power, such as his scolding of President Reagan over his planned visit to an SS cemetery and berating President Clinton for not doing more to halt the slaughter then raging in the former Yugoslavia. Lipstadt's exceptional book deserves to be in libraries as well as in colleges and universities that offer courses on the Holocaust and its aftermath. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Jack Fischel, Messiah College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
