If it's about Jews, it's news. From celebrities' conspiracy theories to American presidential candidates railing against anti-Semitism to the occasional news factoid that some person of interest has just discovered heretofore unknown Jewish relatives, nearly everyone wants to talk about it. Are the Jews God's chosen people? Many, Jews and non-Jews alike, think so-and about what other group is that question even asked? Why is a tiny group of people who, for nearly two millennia, had no land to call their own the object of so much outsized and fanciful belief, both negative and positive? In Jewcentricity, Adam Garfinkle takes readers on a wry and learned tour of the world's obsessions with Jews. Hamas blames the financial crisis on Jews. Iranian television claims that the Harry Potter books and movies are a Ziono-Hollywood conspiracy. Mel Gibson blamed all the wars in history on the Jews. Jews win a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes, and arguments over the sources of supposed superior Jewish intelligence go on without end. Dishy actress Scarlett Johansson is Jewish, Madonna is into what some have told her is Jewish mysticism, and some claim that Abe Lincoln was Jewish.

Who cares? Way too many people, it seems. Drawing on insights from history, philosophy, religion, and social science, Adam Garfinkle explains how the strategies that kept Diaspora Jewry going for millennia have led many non-Jews to accuse Jews of chauvinism, secrecy, trickery, and conspiratorial lever-pulling, and to envy them for many of the same and other supposed talents. Garfinkle divides the sources of grandiose claims about the Jews into four groups: anti-Semites, philo-Semites, Jewish chauvinists, and so-called self-hating Jews. He traces the origins and history of the most common myths about Jews and reveals how these impossible exaggerations, both positive and negative, feed off of and perpetuate each other. Complete with a thoughtful and detailed examination of how to recognize the difference between mere anti-Jewish sentiment and genuine anti-Semitism, Jewcentricity is the ultimate field guide to paranoid, romantic, diabolical, boastful, well-intentioned, and murderous misinformation about Jews.