I'm so sorry - I only had this title as an acsm file, and it expired before I got around to reading it. My apologies!

I have given a 5-star rating by way of apology, and because I can't Give Feedback without giving a star rating.

Apologies again, and best of luck with your publications!

A fascinating social history written with notable skill--a bit dense, but definitely worth adding to a progressive bookshelf.

A fascinating history of how we as a society have dealt with strangers, and the extent to which a fear of strangers has become part of our political narrative.

Of Fear And Strangers is subtitled A History Of Xenophobia - which seems like a pretty timely subject and a very broad church indeed. It feels like a pretty universal axiom of human nature that we are predisposed to hate "the other". But that isn't really what this book is about. Instead it is a history of the term Xenophobia, spending a lot of time seeing if the term ever really existed in the Greek, and then skipping through the ages until a modern coinage in the late Victorian period. Makari is right of course that once concepts have names they gain a different kind of power, but the introduction touts this survey as something that might be able to help dismantle xenophobia, when it really ends up allowing us to point out when the word is being used incorrectly (according the current agreed usage - as the word has slipped through a number of meanings in its time).

Luckily Makari is an engaging guide through the use and misuse of the word, and wears his scholarship lightly. But there is a sense as we look for crumbs in 19th century newspapers that he himself knows that the project has slightly slipped away from him. The concept of people hating outsides is so large and slippery that it takes in diverse prejudices such as racism, jingoism and the concept of nation states. These get played through and there is much to me said for the work here on why xenophobia as a concept is generally ascribed to ones enemies before WW1 to show how unreasonable they are rather than a recognisable state for their own citizens. And certainly near the end he shows how a word previously used around warring nations gets played in the time of peace to prop up far right propaganda and anti-immigration rhetoric.

Of Fear And Strangers was an interesting read which promised a little more than it could deliver. The history of the term xenophobia is not the same as the history of xenophobia - but then the history of xenophobia is pretty much the warring parts of all human history. What Makari does well is at least show how the term has shifted through usage, and how the idea of broad xenophobia (rather than say specific Francophobia) has become so accepted as part of human nature that it is proudly trumped by people and even in some case politicians.

How much are you a ‘stranger’ in your home country? The author of ‘Of Fear And Strangers: A History of Xenophobia”, George Makari, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences is an American citizen of Lebanese parents and before the 2016 events of Brexit and Trump, had not addressed his own identity. Deciding to look at xenophobia as a subject, a vast topic to address.

In ‘Of Fear And Strangers’, Makari looks specifically at “who first deemed such reactions ‘phobic’, that is, irrational and mistaken” and “how and when was there an awakening of conscience by which some proclaimed it unreasonable to mistreat strangers.”

It’s a fascinating read, looking at xenophobia, which began as a psychiatric diagnosis and making reference to the vast history and social studies on our assumptions regarding outsiders. He tells us that cognitive scientists “run into a wall when they try to account for disdain towards strangers”.

Trying to ascertain what causes xenophobia, he synthesises a century of history on the subject covering psychology, sociology and philosophy. Reminding us that words over history can take on new meanings, xenophobia had in recent history taken on “dwindling relevance” but in 2016 “xenophobia was again on everyone’s lips” and the extent of its reawakening remains to be seen.

What an absolutely remarkable book. It's not quite what I was expecting - which was a history of, I guess, where xenophobia has occurred, and maybe it consequences. But more interestingly that that, this is a history of the very concept of xenophobia. It does use examples of historical xenophobia - of course it does; you can't discuss what the word means without showing what it has looked like. But it's more psychological and philosophical than I was expecting, as a way of getting to the guts of why humans can react so poorly towards strangers, and how we have tried to explain that to ourselves.

And the first thing I learned is that 'xenophobia' as a word is brand new. Like, end of the 19th century new. Makari goes through his whole journey of discovery about this - detailing what he read and what explanations he chased down - in what almost amounts to a thriller in terms of sudden clues popping up. This was the first hint that not only was this going to be fascinating information, but also that the style was going to keep me engaged and keep me ploughing through what otherwise might have been overwhelming, both intellectually and emotionally. This was also building on a very personal opening to the book: Makari outlines his own family's experience of being "xenos" - strangers - descended from Lebanese ancestors, living in America, experiencing the dismissal of "Arabs" and wondering about his family's place in the world. Being published in 2021, as well, and of course, the question of xenophobia and how "we" react to the "stranger" remains as tragically relevant today as it has been at any time in the past.

Part 1 explores "The Origins of Xenophobia" - where the word originates, how it was used to describe the so-called Boxer Rebellion in China - and therefore the 'mad' reaction of Chinese people to Westerners and all the 'enlightenment' they could bring. And then how the word was used in colonial contexts - xenophobia is a product of the inferior mind, because 'they' don't understand what 'we' (colonisers) are bringing, and they don't know any better than to be hostile! And then on through Conrad's Heart of Darkness, flipping that idea of xenophobia around and showing how colonisers might be the scared ones... and then on into discussion of immigration. Sadly, that connects really early on with Jewish migration, and then of course the book leads into the Holocaust.

Part 2, then, explores "Inside the Xenophobic Mind." I have neither philosophical nor psychological training, so this part both taught me many new things, and was also surprisingly approachable. Well, approachable in terms of understanding in general, although again confronting in some parts - like the experiments to train kids into having phobias to try and understand how such fears can develop... and also because some of the philosophical aspects definitely went over my head. So this section, too, made me think much more both about xenophobia as a concept but also about how different groups have approached the desire to understand it - external or internal reasons, love and projection and can we ever truly know someone else... and so on.

I would heartily recommend this to people who are interested in why humans act the way they do, for people seeking an understanding of the way the world is and has been; whether you're an historian or not, whether you've knowledge of psychology or not, Makari makes difficult concepts relatively straightforward to grasp. And he doesn't claim to be able to explain all of humanity, but the book does suggest a range of ways that we might try to think about ourselves, and our neighbours, and our leaders... and think about why we react the way we do. And that can only be a good thing, right? In fact, I think that as many people as possible should read this book, so that we can be much better at talking about these things, and be a little less defensive.

Of Fear and Strangers is a startling work of historical sleuthing and synthesis which reveals the forgotten histories of xenophobia—and what they mean for us today. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst George Makari, the head of the department of history of psychiatry at Cornell who is also a historian, has written a timely new book Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia. By 2016 when it was impossible not to notice an international resurgence of xenophobia. What had happened? Looking for clues he started out in search of the idea’s origins. To his astonishment, he discovered an unfolding series of never-told stories. He discovered that while the fear and hatred of strangers may be ancient, the notion of a dangerous bias called "xenophobia" arose not that long ago. Coined by late-nineteenth-century doctors and political commentators and popularized by an eccentric stenographer, xenophobia emerged as a popular cultural concept alongside Western nationalism, colonialism, mass migration, and genocide.

Makari chronicles the concept’s rise, from its popularization and perverse misuse to its spread as an ethical principle in the wake of the Holocaust, and then on to its sudden reappearance in the twenty-first century. He investigates xenophobia’s evolution through writers like Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus and Richard Wright, and innovators like Walter Lippmann, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon. Weaving together history, philosophy and psychology, Makari also offers insights into related ideas such as the conditioned response, the stereotype, projection, the authoritarian personality, the other, and institutional bias. Makari offers a unifying paradigm for comprehending more clearly how xenophobia, other irrational anxieties and contests over identity sweep through cultures and lead to the dangerous divisions so prevalent today. A fascinating, informative and eminently readable work of nonfiction. Written in elegant prose, this is a timely and comprehensive investigation of one of the issues blighting our lives. Highly recommended.