Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg Introduction. Who Speaks For The Past? History and Pseudohistory PART I. FREE SPEECH AND HISTORY 1. Giving the Devil His Due The Free Speech Issue 2. The Noble Dream How We Know Anything in History Happened PART II. INSIDE THE DENIAL MOVEMENT 3. Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened? An Inside Look at the Personalities and Organizations 4. Why They Say the Holocaust Never Happened The Ideological Agenda 5. How Deniers Distort History Flaws, Fallacies, and Failings in the Deniersi Arguments PART III. ARGUMENTS AND REFUTATIONS 6. The Crooked Timber of Auschwitz How Concentration Camps Became Death Camps 7. "For God's Sake--Terrible." The Scope and Scale of the Holocaust 8. The Evil of Banality The Protocols of National Socialism PART IV. TRUTH AND HISTORY 9. The Rape of History In Search of a True and Meaningful Past
A selection of the History Book Club.
Michael Shermer is the founder and publisher of Skeptic magazine, Director of the Skeptics Society, Adjunct Professor of the History of Science at Occidental College, and host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech. He is also the host of a national TV show called Exploring the Unknown (Fox Network) and the author of Why People Believe Weird Things (1997), and How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (1999). Alex Grobman is the founding editor in chief of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, as well as the editor of In Defense of the Survivors: The Letters and Documents of Oscar A. Mintzer, AJDC Legal Advisor, Germany, 1945-46 (1999) and coeditor, with Rabbi Daniel Landes and Sybil Milton, of Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust (1983).
"Holocaust denial gets an inventively thorough treatment in this important book. Using the deniers' own words to tear down their arguments, Shermer and Grobman provide a clear method for determining the reality of past events and supply a powerful weapon for anyone who cares about learning from the credible historical record."-Publishers Weekly; "A useful supplement to Deborah Lipstadt's excellent 'Denying the Holocaust.' The authors took the trouble to become personally acquainted with the chief Holocaust deniers, a task which Lipstadt, understandably, disdained; they have thus added considerably to psychological understanding of the strange and irritating phenomenon of Holocaust denial."-The Times Literary Supplement; "A profusion of books on the Holocaust has tumbled from the presses recently, and Denying History deserves a prominent place in their midst, especially for its survey of the flaws, fallacies and failings in the deniers' arguments but also for the authors' discussion of related issues such as free speech."-The Financial Times; "Whether you have never had an interest in the Holocaust, or have always been passionately interested in it, or are sick and tired of hearing about it, you won't be able to stop reading this great, gripping story."-Jared Diamond, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs, and Steel
"Holocaust denial gets an inventively thorough treatment in this important book. Using the deniers' own words to tear down their arguments, Shermer and Grobman provide a clear method for determining the reality of past events and supply a powerful weapon for anyone who cares about learning from the credible historical record."-Publishers Weekly; "A useful supplement to Deborah Lipstadt's excellent 'Denying the Holocaust.' The authors took the trouble to become personally acquainted with the chief Holocaust deniers, a task which Lipstadt, understandably, disdained; they have thus added considerably to psychological understanding of the strange and irritating phenomenon of Holocaust denial."-The Times Literary Supplement; "A profusion of books on the Holocaust has tumbled from the presses recently, and Denying History deserves a prominent place in their midst, especially for its survey of the flaws, fallacies and failings in the deniers' arguments but also for the authors' discussion of related issues such as free speech."-The Financial Times; "Whether you have never had an interest in the Holocaust, or have always been passionately interested in it, or are sick and tired of hearing about it, you won't be able to stop reading this great, gripping story."-Jared Diamond, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs, and Steel
Holocaust denialÄback in the news since the British courts shot down David Irving's libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt (for her groundbreaking book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory) in AprilÄgets an inventively thorough treatment in this important book. Keeping their focus on larger questions about historical rigor and public memory, Shermer (a professor of the history of science at Occidental College and publisher of Skeptic magazine) and Grobman (Rekindling the Flame) look closely at the methods employed by deniers and those used by legitimate historians. "Holocaust denial," they argue, "is not just a Jewish issue. It is an attack on all history and the way we transmit the past to the future." Drawing on a wide array of evidenceÄinterviews they conducted with famous deniers (including Irving himself) and text from their Web sites and literatureÄthe authors explore the difference between legitimate historical revisionism and pseudohistorical denial. They note that historians interested in revising accepted knowledge depend on a wide variety of sources to draw a picture of an event or periodÄif some of that evidence is contradictory, then respectful scholarly debate ensues; if new evidence surfaces, then the historical record gets revised. Deniers, on the contrary, use the barest of evidenceÄone contradiction, for exampleÄto discount entire arguments; meanwhile, they bolster their own arguments with out-of-context phrases and mistranslations. Using the deniers' own words to tear down their arguments, Shermer and Grobman provide a clear method for determining the reality of past events and supply a powerful weapon for anyone who cares about learning from the credible historical record. 42 b&w photos. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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