Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)While interesting reading, and somewhat overdone in terms of the gory detail, one is still lead to not fully take at face value all that is stated by Gross as "fact" in the book.
By his own admission in the chapter titled "New Approach To Sources", Gross offers us the new way of studying history by suggesting that we should accept "...what we read in a particular account as fact, until we find persuasive arguments to the contrary, we would avoid more mistakes than we are likely to commit by adopting the opposite approach, which calls for cautious skepticism toward any testimony until independent confirmation of it's content has been found".
If all "historians" were to follow that approach than our historical texts (which are based on empirical evidence) might be full of false information. I am not suggesting that the events described in the book did not happen at all (to the contrary there is independent confirmation of some of what is written), but I am suggesting that all historical subjects be treated with the same "cautious skepticism". The Holocaust of the WW II era should not be afforded any different treatment, just because it may be politically correct to do so.
Gross has cheated the process by which a historical thesis is made, investigated, proven, and documented, by simply taking a few uncorroborated testimonies at face value. As a respected historian and Professor at New York University, Gross should both know better, and should be ashamed of his behavior as a "historian" in the writing of this book.
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