The Holocaust In American Life

· HarperCollins
3.0
1 review
Ebook
382
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

This “courageous and thought-provoking book” examines how the Holocaust came to hold its unique place in American memory (Foreign Affairs).

Prize–winning historian Peter Novick explores in absorbing detail the decisions that moved the Holocaust to the center of American life. He illuminates how Jewish leaders invoked its memory to muster support for Israel, and how politicians in turn used it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments, their meaning, and their consequences.

Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem “not so bad”? Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, while comparatively little is done to memorialize American slavery?

A New York Times Notable Book

Ratings and reviews

3.0
1 review

About the author

Peter Novick is professor of history at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Resistance Versus Vichy and That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession, which won the American Historical Association's prize for the best book of the year in American history.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.