Very good and highly recommended if you are interested in the subject matter. ( )

Spellbinding and powerfully written book. Deborah Lipstadt is or was the head of Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. She had previously written Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. David Irving was a prominent "historian," Holocaust denier and anti-Semite mentioned in the book. David Irving proceeded to sue the author under the UK's libel laws, where the defendant bears the burden of proving that the writing was true, and the losing party pays the winner's attorneys' fees.

To illustrate the depths of David Irving's evil he stated, with regard to the testimony of another witness,"I am not just going to annihilate evidence from Dr Roth, I am going to exterminate
it when the times comes." That was particularly vile court testimony in a trial about the Holocaust. To illustrate the level of David Irving's credibility, he testified there were Zyklon B residues in what he testified was a morgue because the gas was present "because the room was used "for fumigating objects or cadavers."

The book details both the excruciating effort for trial preparation, the lurid details of the trial and the aftermath of a glorious victory. It was a hard book to put down. One of the best books I've read. ( )

Moral of the story: do not mess with Deborah Lipstadt. ( )

I was stymied by the task of writing this review for a long time. I didn't know where to start because this is a subject so emotionally charged that it's difficult to discuss. Then I realized that this was one of the central issues of the book and the trial. How do you approach Holocaust denial? Do you even dignify that position by bothering to argue it?

This is the question Deborah Lipstadt has to answer when historian David Irving brought a lawsuit against her for calling him a Holocaust denier, and a liar. He brought the suit in London because British law required Lipstadt to prove that her accusations were true rather than placing the burden of proof on Irving himself as plaintiff as American law would have done. Lipstadt could have made it all go away by settling -- and there was pressure on her to do so, even from parts of the Jewish community -- but she chose to fight the suit because not to would have been to imply that it was okay to deny the murder of millions of Jews (and others, though that doesn't actually enter into the narrative.)

The account of the trial shows clearly how frustrated Lipstadt was with the process, with the fact that her legal team would not allow her to testify, nor would they allow Holocaust survivors to take the stand. She didn't understand either position and butted heads with her lawyers on more than one occasion. She took exception to her barrister treating a visit to Auschwitz as a forensic visit rather than a memorial one. Her responses were utterly understandable and based on emotion, and that is why her team made the choices they did. The law doesn't deal in emotional arguments, it deals in facts. The weight of tears cannot be measured against the weight of evidence.

Lipstadt and her team didn't have to prove that millions of people died and that Hitler was ultimately responsible, they just had to prove that in misrepresenting facts and changing words from primary documents, Irving lied. They didn't have to prove that anti-Semitism and racism are wrong, they only had to prove that Irving was a racist and anti-Semite. And only a painstaking examination of fact could ever prove those things.

The book is a powerful one, particularly in our time when racism, anti-Semitism, and all manner of ugly, troll-like behavior is being enabled at the highest levels of government. Irving's behavior feels familiar to this contemporary American, a man who cannot admit either mistakes, or wrong-doing, and who is not only a Holocaust denier but who, on the night when the verdict was given in Lipstadt's favor, went on British television to talk about how, in the end, the decision was actually quite favorable to him. It wasn't, it was devastating to him, but he was either incapable of understanding that or he simply refused to admit it.

When asked if he would then stop denying the Holocaust, Irving replied, "Good lord, no."

I should add that before I wrote this review I also watched the film, and found it excellent. I think they're complimentary, and one enhances the other. Either way, if you're at all interested in the case, one which I did find I remembered from the late 1990s, the book and to a lesser extent the film, is well worth your time. ( )

IN 1993, Deborah Lipstadt publish a history of the Holoaust Denier Movement focusing on David Irving as the mosy dangerous of these deniers because of his standing as an eminent historian of WW II. Irving responded by threatening to sue her & her publisher, Penguin, for libel. Feeling that if they backed down, no one would be safe from this kind of intimidation therefore they decide to defend themselves in court.

In the UK, the individual or organization accused of libeling someone must prove what they wrote or said was true and thus not libel. In America, it is the responsibility of the offended person to prove the action was libelous.

Lipstadt had to raise one and a half million dollars to cover her legal expenses. The whole case took five years from start to finish. To prove that Irving had misused his sources to prove his preconceived theories about the Final Solution and the Holocaust, her legal brought in experts on the gas chambers, the ovens and the buildings the death camps. Other expert historians went through all of Irving's books looking for other lies and discrepancies of which in the end they found many. In the end the judge found Irving had lied in his works and was a racist and Holocaust denier.

Interestingly, eminent historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper and Sir John Keegan continued to support Irving even after the wheels started to fall of his wagon. ( )