Book Selections

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws--the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Contrary to those who have insisted otherwise, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. He looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends the understanding of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.

In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews. With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing history of a Jewish concern for social justice. At once sober and radical, A Time To Speak Out reclaims an often intemperate debate for those both inside and outside Israel who prefer to confront uncomfortable truths. Nearly all contributors were associated with the Independent Jewish Voices declaration which, when launched in Britain in 2007, opened a floodgate of responses. Independent Jewish Voices is a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights.