Thank you to LibraryThing for the opportunity to early review this book. Unfortunately, due to this authors deeply racist, zionist, and hateful stances regarding the genocide of Palestine I will not be reading or reviewing this title & have concerns regarding his ability to present history accurately.

As an American, I have always been confused by antisemitism. Our world has unfortunately maintained hate, rejecting others often based on appearance. Groups that were hated in the past in America, such as the Irish and Italians, have over time been accepted under the umbrella of whiteness. Others who have difficulty being accepted under this umbrella (typically based on appearing “other”) remain marginalized. Somehow this acceptance appears to not have extended to the Jewish people. This timely book on the history of antisemitism and maintaining factors is an excellent work that should be required reading. This is heavy reading packaged beautifully, and not at all brief as the title implies. But I imagine it would be difficult to explore the full history of antisemitism in anything briefer. Having received ARC PDF version, I appreciate the augmented reality features of this book allowing access to videos and other tools to enhance learning. Worthwhile read. ( )

A Brief and Visual History of Antisemitism is a full textbook that will give you the Jews' fraught history as victims of racism throughout millennia. It is so much more than just the Holocaust. The book takes you all the way back to the beginning so, if you don't know the history of Judaism, it gives you a foundation, at least enough to understand the beginnings and, of course, what developed into antisemitism as it exists today. I found this useful as I'm not exactly a scholar on Judaism or on the history of Israel so this served me well.

The textbook is very visual, which makes it attractive to younger readers, and it includes links to interactive videos, which I found educational, but also very interesting. They also served as nice breaks from reading. Although the book is full of vivid photos, I didn't find any of it overwhelming, which one might be concerned about, particularly those sections pertaining to the Holocaust. It was very tastefully done with enough included to serve an impact without being inappropriate for young readers.

Really this textbook is intended more for young Jewish students, my understanding being to equip them with the history they need to understand antisemitism and anti-Zionism and effectively defend themselves against it when they'll no doubt encounter it in today's climate. However, you don't have to fall into that demographic to enjoy and benefit from the content. If you want to learn more about the subject, I'd certainly recommend this book. ( )

This is well done book. I would highly recommend it to all college students and some high school students and some carefully selected Jewish religious school students 13 or 12 and up, and it would make a great textbook for classes. I’d say that this would be a good book for every adult to read, not just Jewish readers. This is an informative textbook and a useful workbook. It’s comprehensive. I was impressed by how thorough it is. It’s a great book.

From the title I thought that this would be a graphic book and a quick read. It’s not either but it is a great book.

I do see the advantage of an e-copy for this particular book. At the end of each unit there is a recap with a video (I didn’t watch) and a short list of books for further reading and a workbook page for questions and reflections and a long list of keywords. Throughout the book there are various links and augmented reality features. There are frequent ”Scan me” links and videos . I didn’t do these as I read the book since my access to my copy was precarious but I plan to play with some of that content before I take the e-book off of my device.

The book Is not impartial (nor should it be!) and it does express opinions but I’m basically okay with them, especially since they’re backed up with facts. A lot of facts are presented and they have cited sources. I agreed with most of the opinions but the narrative lost me on one page when Trump and Bush were lauded over Biden and Obama. Any sentence that says anything positive about Trump is misguided at the least, and there is a ton of evidence that the man is antisemitic. This book should not be saying a single positive thing about him. I could say so much more about the “left”/”right” divide, and this book does address some of this issue, most of it to my satisfaction, sadly.

This book left me feeling sad, scared, angry, frustrated, but grateful that this issue is being written about and discussed. It’s sobering and horrifying to read about the current situation and the history that precedes it because it was just so much. I guess I knew of all this (in general) but it was still shocking to me.

The Combatting Antisemitism section is excellent and has suggestions that are truly helpful but it’s so short compared to the rest of the book. Trying to tackle this problem is daunting.

I didn’t get a readable copy of the book until May 14.

Contents:
Preface, Book Structure, Etc. – read on May 14
01 Defining Antisemitism – read on May 15
02 Beginnings of Antisemitism – read on May 16
03 Proliferation of Antisemitism – read on May 16
04 Secularization of Antisemitism – read on May 17
05 Apex of Antisemitism – read on May 18 & 19 & 20
06 Easternization of Antisemitism – read on May 20
07 Politicization of Antisemitism – read on May 22 & 23 & 24 & 25
08 The Current Landscape – read on May 26 & 27 & 28 & 29
09 Combating Antisemitism – read on May 30

Missing from my copy are the:

Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index

I’ve contacted the publisher to check to see if these sections were supposed to be included. I would have liked to read them.

I won this e-book from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program: “ADVANCE REVIEW COPY UNEDITED/UNFINISHED FOR PRESENTATION ONLY” in exchange for an honest review. I had problems downloading it and keeping it available for reading so I’ll be careful from now on to enter to win only paper books. Thanks to a lot of work from the publisher and help from Abigail I finally received a readable copy.

Note: The publisher did send me the whole book upon request. My devices couldn't handle the whole thing though so I still couldn't read the last extra sections which is actually okay with me. I did notice something I hadn't when I read the book. There is a note that this book is recommended for those readers 16 & up and that does make sense to me. ( )

I was provided an Advance Review Copy by the publisher, and I deeply appreciate the effort that went into this educational publication on the history of antisemitism. The book is in a graphic novel form with questions for discussions at the end of the sections. If you teach religion or history, I would encourage you to obtain a copy of this book for your students. ( )