This is a book is a wonderful and positive exposition on the ideas and actions that have created fundamental and profound changes in modernity--and can continue to do so, given the right education and application of these ideas.

I read it over the summer in four hours straight...something I have not done in a long time with any book, for it was both fascinating and illuminating in terms of an active modern politics today. I would recommend it strongly to students and practioners of politics, indeed everyone, for as Plato once said:

'The disadvantage of not participating in politics is consenting to be ruled by your inferiors.'

In short, Bronner has laid out some important paradigms that we must engage in if we, as world citizens, are to build a sustainable future.

This is a good book because first it is short and easy to read, it discusses a notorious fabrication or conspiracy theory, and it shows just how confused the Jewish position is with regards to the "other" or antisemitism. The author seems to meander between numerous concepts and explanations of antisemitism, but never really embraces a coherent theme. Oddly, this is very similar to "The Protocols" that he attacks.

We have of course many venues of indoctrination, and "The Protocols" is just one of many. Why anyone would write a book about such a pamphlet that is an obvious forgery over 100 years old, and treat it like a present day threat is a real mystery. In addition, the author seems to be trying to convince Jews to somehow change their behavior, while he excoriates all Gentiles for their insane obsession with antisemitism. He tends to vacillate between "there is no more antisemitism" and "Jews had better give up their world view of domination or people will again become anti-Semitic." He in many ways confirms that Jewishness, unlike other religions, is really a supremacist position that embraces dominance over the "other." He openly discusses the Jewish obsession with racial purity and what will be required to stop intermarriage.

What is lacking in this and books like it, is a real analysis of what we now know about group evolutionary strategies. Kevin MacDonald's trilogy on Jew-Gentile competition, based on group evolutionary strategies, makes this book a transparent work of mere propaganda. Anyone familiar with the neo-Darwinist position on group behavior will recognize what this book is all about trying to make the world safe for Judaism (that is the race, not the religion).

The best book to read to understand this book is MacDonald's "The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements." As an academically reviewed book, and part of the "Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence" series of books edited by Seymour W. Itzkoff, it explains why and for what purpose this book was written.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still worth reading about since it one of those books that it helped start a social movement of increased intolerance and violence towards Jews in Nazi Germany. It is still taken seriously in the present-day middle east.

Author Stephen Bronner's most interesting point is that the Protocols was written in reaction against modernity and its components of a republican state, rule of law, democratic liberalism, universal suffrage, universal equal rights, and separation of church and state. The reactionary forces of the church and aristocracy were against the liberal forces of Jews, freemasons, and the middle class mainly because they wanted to hold on to their arbitrary power over their subjects.

Another observation is that Bronner shows why many Jews support cosmopolitanism and separation of church and state so much; those two things the Protocols opposed with nationalism and the church. Such ideas give the Jews more freedom and equality than they would have under a Christian government or a nation that defines its true citizenry on the basis of race. Nationalism often has a racial component to it as opposed to a cosmopolitanism that pretends that race does not matter.

In the last chapter, Bronner analyzes contemporary anti-semitism and racial nationalism. He advocates that more conservative Jews should even give up their cultural and genetic heritage to the inevitable march of progress, modernity, and cosmopolitanism. Those who resist multiculturalism will be the inevitable losers. To be a racial nationalist is to join forces with the likes that support the values of anti-semites. He poses the question that once antisemitism is removed from society, the Jews themselves may vanish because they will no longer be the persecuted 'others'. But of course, one can think that there are seeds of destruction in excessive cosmopolitanism also.

The Protocols are reprinted in the book. It is clumsily written propaganda, but it came along at the right time and it plays upon fears that people still have today: autocratic world government, destruction of Christianity, planned economic depressions, indoctrination of children in schools of values parents are against, control of the news media that doesn't tell the truth, mindless entertainment to destract citizens from their vanishing freedoms and wealth, and planned spread of diseases for population control. Bronner gives the history of the creation and appearance of the Protocols in Russia in 1905 when the reactionary and anti-semitic monarchy enthusiastically supported its discimination.

Mr. Bronner's book not only manages to crystalize the reason for the forgery but explains the rationale for how the historical remainder of the 20th century proceeded as a result of the "Protocols.." No small feat. In addition, the book is made more valuable because the author doesn't get self conscious about being too objective. Normally, being slightly subjective would detract from a scholarly work such as this. Instead it brings the clarity and understanding the topic truly deserves. If you really want to understand antisemitism without the usual variety of historical apologetics, this is the work to read. The bar has been raised, writers!

Stephen Eric Bronner is a wonderful writer and teacher. I was lucky enough to study under Professor Bronner at Rutgers University and I must say, Moments of Decision is a wonderful book that any one intersted in Political Science must read. Bronner is a provocative writer, who in Moments of Decision uses history in order to predict the future. This book is for anyone who is interested in the radical movements of the 20th century.

I had the pleasure of being taught by Prof. Bronner. He is a brilliant man that offers great insight into every aspect of politics.

Among the many pearls of insight offered by Alfred Kazin is one to which this author should pay much more respect: "What brings us closer to a work of art is not instruction, but another work of art."

Bronner begins his book with a lengthy apologia that explains in detail why every single other thing written about Camus is inadequate. I think such an introduction betrays the sort of scholar who would merrily have joined the pompous Parisian literati of the 1950s that banded *against* Camus, denouncing him as a traitor to the Left, and thereby proving forever their own hollow lack of substance. Therein lies the irony of tone with which this book is laced. Bronner is a man who purports to love Camus, but had he been writing fifty years ago, at the time when Camus most needed friends, I can easily see him being Camus' worst enemy.

As for substance, Bronner appears quite confident that his contribution is entirely original and more significant than anything heretofore written about Camus. I think in fact it is not particularly insightful, or at least no more so than what any intelligent layperson could get by reading Camus' works and the already existing biographical material.

Most insulting is Bronner's brusque disrespect for the Camus biography written by Herbert Lottman. Bronner first explains that the two major English-language Camus biographies in print -- one by Lottman and one by the Frenchman Olivier Todd -- are both inadequate because they are basically factual and not critical. However, the thing I found most frustrating about Bronner's book is that he commits exactly the sin from which Lottman mercifully spared us. Lottman writes in the preface to the second edition of his wonderful book that he will not deign to preach to us about how we should understand Camus. He so refuses because, as he explains, the essence of an artist is not in his biography (or, by extension, in secondary scholarship by university professors like Bronner), but in his works.

Notwithstanding Bronner's lengthly explanation of his own importance, I think his book will very quickly be relegated to the obscurity it deserves.

"Camus" Portrait of a Moralist" is a splendid book. I came across it after just finishing a 400+ biography of the subject that bulged with facts and quotes but lacked insight and analysis. These later two virtues Stephen Bronner provides in abundance. His remarkable achievement is to offer in 150 pages a persuasive interpretation of Camus that brings together his life events, artistic achievements and activities, and his philosophical and political thinking.

Bronner argues that Camus' career evolved in three stages. During his early period he developed his concept of the absurd. The Second World War and Camus' involvement in the resistance heralded a focus on rebellion and the human solidarity that grows out of a shared struggle against a powerful and demonic foe. In the post-war era, however, this solidarity splintered over issues such as communism and the French-Algerian War. During the last 10 years of his life Camus was distinguished by his refusal to embrace ideologies and fanatical devotion to causes regardless the cost in human life and dignity.

Bronner discusses Camus' artistic, philosophical and journalistic works to both demonstrate and illustrate Camus' development until his death at age 47. Within this framework, Bronner draws welcome attention to neglected aspects of Camus' outlook such as his almost contemplative atheism.

In sum, Bronner's stellar accomplishment if to write an interpretation of Camus that is both clear and concise for the uninitiated, and subtle and nuanced for those already acquainted with his subject.

Galen Tinder galen@blast.net