Neil Baldwin, "Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate" (2002)

Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (PublicAffairs: 2002)

On the whole, a disappointment. The book seemed, in all but a few preliminary chapters, to be just as much about the Jewish resistance to Ford's (and his employee's) anti-semitism. Baldwin opened the intriguing question of whether Ford was 'genuinely', perhaps better stated as 'independently' anti-semitic, or whether he had been led by several key employees to arrive at an unthinking, uncritical parroting of anti-semitic ideas. Strangely, "Henry Ford and the Jews" left me feeling that I certainly did not know Henry Ford much better than I did before reading it, had gained little grasp about the influence of his anti-semitic publishing campaign, and perhaps most frustratingly, had little clearer sense of how Americans responded to his ideas.

Overall, a frustrating book that left me with more questions and very few answers.

You can read some for yourself.