Racism: A Short History

George M. Fredrickson. Princeton University Press, $41 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-691-00899-8

An erudite comparison of racism and anti-Semitism throughout Western history, George M. Fredrickson's amazingly concise Racism: A Short History explains how medieval anti-Semitism influenced the racist rationalization of the African slave trade; shows how the Enlightenment and Romanticism opened up new avenues for thinking about Jews and slaves; and contrasts American Jim Crow laws, Nazi Germany's Aryan nation and South African apartheid. A U.S. history professor at Stanford and co-director of the Research Institute for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Fredrickson offers a scholarly but compelling and accessible narrative. (May)

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