Most Americans assume the end of World War II ushered in a new era of tolerance. Steven J. Ross has built a book around the opposite premise. The University of Southern California historian — whose previous title, “Hitler in Los Angeles,” was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Los Angeles Times bestseller for 15 weeks — visits Vroman’s Bookstore Thursday evening to discuss and sign “The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy,” published in late April by Bloomsbury.
Ross’s new book chronicles a postwar America in which antisemitism and racism rose, not fell — the number of organized hate groups more than doubled between 1940 and 1946 — and tells the largely forgotten story of three civil rights operatives who infiltrated, monitored, and undermined a network of white supremacist leaders working to “finish the job Hitler had begun.” Arnold Forster of the Anti-Defamation League, George Mintzer of the American Jewish Committee, and James Sheldon of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League led a multi-pronged effort that, Ross argues, has been all but forgotten despite scoring important victories.
A distinguished professor of history at USC and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, Ross is the author of “Hollywood Left and Right,” winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award, and “Working-Class Hollywood,” a Best Books of 1998 selection by the Los
Angeles Times. He earned a B.A. from Columbia, a B.Phil. from Oxford, and a Ph.D. from Princeton.
Steven J. Ross discusses and signs “The Secret War Against Hate” on Thursday, May 14 at 7 p.m. Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena. For more information, call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromansbookstore.com. RSVP recommended.
