Well worth the money

Shermer and Grobman's _Denying History_ whetted, but did not completely satisfy, my appetite to learn more about the historical evidence for the Holocaust, so I bought and read van Pelt's book. I know that in this book van Pelt covers only a portion of the information that was in his reports for the Irving trial, but it was certainly enough to convince me that Judge Gray's verdict was the proper one. This book covers a lot of technical information that would possibly be hard to digest or be boring if it were presented by another author, but van Pelt writes very well, and I had trouble setting his book down. The author comes across as a very reasonable figure who is able to resist the urge to over-rely on either sentimentality or sarcasm. Perhaps I will need to read something else to internalize the horror that was the Holocaust, but I don't need to read anything else to see that it really did happen.

Finally, let me say that I was unprepared for what a big, handsomely bound, handsomely typeset book this would be. (I know that talking about the attractiveness of a book about the Holocaust is probably as bad as Jerry Seinfeld making out during "Schindler's List", but I figured that there might be some other bibliophiles out there who care about such things.) ( )