"Explain? Impossible. But Hayes’s timely, accessible book sheds light on the horror. In certain circumstances it reminds us that humans can rationalize anything."
"Peter Hayes poses eight key questions about the Holocaust and then analyzes and answers them with enviable mastery, succinctness, and clarity. Hayes’s arguments are presented with a scholarly authority that is judicious, compelling, and accessible. A gem of a book."
"A fascinating, remarkably lucid, compulsively readable explanation of how the mass murder of Europe’s Jews came about and how it transpired in the middle of the twentieth century."
With his judicious, thoughtful and balanced answers to difficult and often inflammatory questions, Hayes…has provided an intellectually searching and wide-ranging study of the Holocaust in a modest, didactic form. He provides just enough thumbnail narrative to frame his very thoughtful answers for a lay audience, as each chapter of the book addresses a particular question…
The New York Times Book Review - Nicholas Stargardt
10/10/2016
"Calmly argued, alert to the most recent scholarship about the Holocaust, and full of good sense, Peter Hayes’s new book carries an essential title asked universally: Why? Why did such a thing happen? Taking up this most difficult of challenges, his pages answer questions that many analysts dare not even ask, let alone answer. That is why this work should be required reading, both for specialists and for those who seek more recently to understand."
"The book breathes the spirit of serious learning but is at the same time extremely well written and readable....Hayes gives conclusive, well considered, and persuasive answers to many Holocaust questions. In the introduction, he promises a 'comprehensive stocktaking.’ In that he has succeeded."
"I recommend this book for a lucid, well-crafted introduction to the history of the Holocaust. Unlike most works on the history of the Holocaust....Hayes’ book concentrates....on helping readers to understand why the Holocaust occurred when it did, in the manner it did and with the results it produced. It offers readers a window onto how historians go about finding answers to these questions."
Jewish Telegraph Agency - David Engel
"This clearly written, cogently argued and researched book....courageously confronts some of the thorniest issues raised by the Shoah, making Why?: Explaining the Holocaust an indispensable work for specialists and informed readers alike."
Jewish Book Council - Michael N. Dobkowski
"An original, informative and essential addition to the field of Holocaust Studies. It should be required reading for every introductory course on the Holocaust."
"Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources."
"A short review cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of the scholarship exhibited in each chapter. This authoritative volume is mandatory for scholars and armchair historians interested in the origins, course, and outcomes of the Holocaust. Essential for all levels/libraries."
"Hayes has written a valuable book for today’s challenges, with perspective and sensitivity, that is, indeed, authoritative, readable and revealing."
"In his mind-opening 2017 book, Why?: Explaining the Holocaust , Peter Hayes says the subject ‘continues to resist comprehension.’ Resist but not defy. His many conclusions include the awesome—for better or worse—power of individual agency: No Hitler, no Holocaust. But Hitler began tentatively, with small measures. Hayes concludes his book with a German proverb: Wehret den Anfangen —beware the beginnings."
"With his judicious, thoughtful and balanced answers to difficult and often inflammatory questions, Hayes....has provided an intellectually searching and wide-ranging study of the Holocaust."
"This book is outstanding—beautifully written, with enviable clarity of argument, countless instructive details, and memorable, evocative images. On every issue around which there has been either controversy or confusion—from the interrelationships between the Holocaust and the mass murder of individuals with disabilities to the motivations of the perpetrators, the economics of the killing operations, the special situation of Poland, the experiences of slave laborers, or the dimensions of Jewish resistance—Peter Hayes helpfully distills the debates and provides judicious, orienting assessments. A masterful, indispensable, landmark work."
11/01/2016
★ 2016-11-20
