100 books like Woke Antisemitism

What’s a book against language policing and cancel culture doing on a list about post-addiction marriage? Simple: the self-obsessed, oft-offended nonsense permeating universities exemplifies what married couples in recovery must roundly reject. 

The book’s co-authors – a social psychologist and a free speech activist – profess three Great Untruths adversely affecting Generation Z: 

What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. This prompts us to avoid narratives challenging our preconceived notions or personal experiences. 

Always trust your feelings. Among other problems, unquestionably trusting our feelings leads to taking offense when none is intended.

Life is a battle between good and evil people. This leads to a blame-first mentality that assumes the worst about others. 

They may as well have been speaking to married couples attempting to stay together post-recovery.

This book persuaded me that the “woke” movement (which McWhorter calls “Third Wave antiracism”) is not a political movement but a religion in the fullest sense of the term.

It has articles of faith and a common language, and it goes after heretics with the vengeance of the Spanish Inquisition. Since it’s a religion we can’t defeat it with arguments or reason. It’s also dangerous; as McWhorter writes: “Make no mistake: these people are coming after your kids.”

But he isn’t fatalistic or pessimistic. He gives specific, sensible suggestions for defeating the new religion and for better ways of moving forward on racial equality. Two things make this book unique: McWhorter’s writing is a joy to read, and because he’s Black and politically liberal, he can’t be easily dismissed.

This book is not actually about wokeness. Instead, it helps us see the dangers inherent in that ideology.

Perilous Times is a partial history of the American government’s censorship of speech and thought from the 1790s to the early 2000s. Stone is a fabulous storyteller. Even though I’ve studied – and taught – constitutional law and constitutional history for decades, some of what he recounts was new to me, and all of it was newly fascinating in its detail and its focus on people as well as events.

In a way, this is a “be careful what you wish for” warning to both the woke and the unwoke: once it becomes widely accepted that it’s OK to restrict harmful speech, anyone who disagrees with whatever the majority or the government happens to favor is at risk.

Like Stone’s book, this is a book about history, not wokeness. It’s not an easy read, but it’s worth the effort.

It recounts the triumph of scientific reasoning and liberal tolerance over several decades in the mid-twentieth century. That triumph was largely brought about by the “secularization” of American culture, spearheaded by Jewish intellectuals.

I read it long before wokeness was a thing – it was published in 1996 – and found it interesting but not particularly relevant to anything I was thinking about. But when wokeness came along, it suddenly hit me that this new religion was taking us backwards, back to the beginning of Hollinger’s story.

If that trend continues, we are in danger of losing the gains that science and tolerance have produced.

This book was the first time I read a graphic novel with Jewish themes other than the Holocaust. As a comic book artist who was exploring my Jewish roots, it was eye-opening to read a tale with Jewish characters, especially because it deals with the legend of the Golem, a mystical being made of mud and brought to life through Hebrew incantations.  Add to that great action scenes of 1920s baseball, and it makes for a great read.

Recent authoritarian trends and attempts to re-establish white supremacy are not new in America.

In this novel, Philip Roth envisions an alternate history where Charles Lindbergh has defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election. He then proceeds to collude with Adolph Hitler and seeks to establish anti-Semitism throughout the country.

The novel is based on the actual attitudes which Lindbergh had toward Jews and other minorities. Of course, this is not truly an insurrection. Still, it is a portrayal of how extreme right-wing attitudes can seek to rob people of our hard-won democracy.

I was raised with a deep respect for freedom for all people in this country. My family had several Jewish friends and we loved and learned from them.

Focus was the sole novel written by acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller. And while Miller would go on to be known primarily as a dramatist, Focus is an exceptional novel with a timely and engaging premise. 

The protagonist is a somewhat introverted man (Lawrence Newman) who is moderately successful in his field, working in New York City, while residing in Queens. Set in 1945, Focus is set during a particular time of unrest, especially in New York City, where many are resentful of the U.S.’s involvement in WWII. This resentment comes to a head when Lawrence needs to be fitted for glasses due to his developing near-sightedness. 

Yet as a result of how he looks with his glasses, people start to assume that he is Jewish, even though he is not. This misidentification not only leads to him being the unwilling recipient of anti-semitism but also leads to his own resentment… show more.

I enthusiastically recommend Legacies of Anti-Semitism in France, a must-read for those intrigued by the complex interplay of literature, history, and cultural context.

This book provides an insightful exploration of the writings of four influential figures—Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, Jean Giraudoux, and Andre Gide—in the context of France's pre-World War II history of anti-Jewish thought. Mehlman's essays dive into a range of fascinating topics, from Blanchot's unique conception of literature to Lacan's distinctive style, Giraudoux's connection to Racine, and the intricacies of sexual politics in Gide's work.

I found Mehlman's insights into Giraudoux particularly enlightening. Especially his analysis of The Madwoman of Chaillot broadens our understanding of how historical context shapes literary works, offering invaluable perspectives on the intellectual history of contemporary France.

The banquiers that the Madwoman of Chaillot kills in the 1942 play are openly described as Jews in a 1938 Giraudoux’s text: Pleins Pouvoirs. Don't miss the… show more.

This is the first novel by Modiano, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014.  It has been translated into English but with a French title, which contains a pun that can’t be translated (referring both to a location in Paris and to the infamous badge imposed by the Nazis). A darkly comic and shocking send-up of French antisemitic literature, the novel features a clownish protagonist named Raphaël Schlemilovitch who embraces every antisemitic stereotype imaginable, becoming in turn, a cosmopolitan, a traitor, a collaborator, and a pimp before winding up on the couch of Sigmund Freud begging to be put out of his misery.  Modiano wrote this novel to exorcise the demons of French literature and it helped him carve out a place as a distinctly Jewish voice in the French literary pantheon.

This is Eliot’s last novel about an ostensible British aristocrat’s journey to uncovering his real identity. Often referred to as Eliot’s “Jewish novel,” it reflects her unerring ability to empathize with the Other. It is very long but also un-put-downable, with two interwoven plots that complement each other masterfully. It’s at once a conventional 19th-century novel and an entirely original and surprising take on the genre. As a Jew with a love of nineteenth-century British novels, this one spoke to me most powerfully.