A social history of anti-Semitism through the ages by the author of Ben-Gurion of Israel: Weizmann: Last of the Patriarchs; etc. Litvinoff opens with the crucifixion of Jesus, viewing this event as the platform upon which all future anti-Semitism was built as it forced the Jews into taking shelter in their ""tribal cohesion"" and solace in their sacred roots. He then surveys the years during which, as Jules Michelet put it, the Jew was a ""spectre stalking the passage of time."" He chronicles the various persecutions (such as that of the First Crusade) and periodic Jewish flights (such as those to England, Germany, Holland, and France--where Jews experienced their greatest level of acceptance). There are ironies here, too: with the breakup of the Catholic ""monopoly in the wake of the Reformation,"" one might have expected Jews to fare well; but the emerging Protestant sects once again used the Jews as scapegoats--as witness in Martin Luther's pamphlet On the Jews and their Lies. Seeking a world context for his subject, Litvinoff posits anti-Semitism as just one example among many of man's inhumanity to man (there are the Khmer Rouge's treatment of fellow Cambodians, the Thais' hostility to Chinese in their midst, etc.), and he states in addition that we ""should [not] forget how Jews could find themselves in situations that gave them a share of the guilt of oppressing others"" (as in their role as merchants in the slave trade, or in South Africa, or in Israel itself, where they rule over Arabs and Palestinians). In all, a learned, well-written volume, much more accessible than, say, Poliakov's four-volume The History of Anti-Semitism (1974-85).