About this item
Antisemitism, as hatred of Jews and Judaism, has been a central problem of Western civilization for millennia, and its history continues to invite debate. This Very Short Introduction untangles the history of the phenomenon, from ancient religious conflict to 'new' antisemitism in the 21st century. Steven Beller reveals how Antisemitism grew as a political and ideological movement in the 19th century, how it reached its dark apogee in the worst genocide in modern history - the Holocaust - and how Antisemitism still persists around the world today.In the new edition of this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Beller brings his examination of this complex and still controversial issue up to date with a discussion of Antisemitism in light of the 2008 financial crash, the Arab Spring, and the on-going crisis between Israel and Palestine.
About the Author
Steven Beller was born in London, England in 1958, to an American father and Austrian mother. He was raised in Maidenhead, Berks. (now Theresa May's constituency) , and went to the University of Cambridge, where he studied History. As a research fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge, he wrote his first book, "Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938" (Cambridge, 1989) . Since 1989 (with frequent trips to Central Europe) he has lived in the United States, first in New York and since 1991 in the Washington DC area, where he is an independent scholar of Modern Jewish History and Central European History. He has written widely within (and sometimes even outside) those parameters, on "Herzl" Halban/Grove) , "Francis Joseph" (Addison Wesley Longman) , "Antisemitism: VSI" (Oxford) , "Democracy: All that matters" (Hodder/McGraw-Hill) ; and "A Concise History of Austria" (Cambridge) . He also edited and introduced the essay collection "Rethinking Vienna 1900" (Berghahn) . His latest book, to be published in the USA in July, is "The Habsburg Monarchy 1815-1918". He believes that anyone (such as Theresa May) who could say that "citizens of the world are citizens of nowhere" need their heads examined and could do with reading a few books on Jewish and Central European history.
