The Aryan myth: A history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe

by Léon Poliakov

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760700346
• ISBN13: 9780760700341
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An eye-opener for anybody interested in this subject

This book gives an excellent analysis of how ideas of racism and nationalism developed over centuries in Europe culminating in the two world wars. It is interesting to see how even the most revered pesonalities of their times, from Shakespeare to Voltaire, helped propagate and perpetuate the ideas of a superior race and how eurocentric intellectuals distorted and discarded more plausible explanation of facts for their own racist theories and misled the masses. The authors style of writing is commendable in the sense that he does not impose any particular views on the reader and presents facts as facts, leaving the reader to make his own judgements, unlike many other authors who have written on this subject. Its also a good reading on social psychology and interesting parallels can be drawn between the social psyche presented in this book and that in Goldings "Lord of the flies".