American myths about national character tend to overshadow the historical realities. Mr. Horsman's book is the first study to examine the origins of racialism in America and to show that the belief in white American superiority was firmly ensconced in the nation's ideology by 1850. The author deftly chronicles the beginnings and growth of an ideology stressing race, basic stock, and attributes in the blood. He traces how this ideology shifted from the more benign views of the Founding Fathers, which embraced ideas of progress and the spread of republican institutions for all. He finds linkages between the new, racialist ideology in America and the rising European ideas of Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and scientific ideologies of the early nineteenth century. Most importantly, however, Horsman demonstrates that it was the merging of the Anglo-Saxon rhetoric with the experience of Americans conquering a continent that created a racialist philosophy. Two generations before the new immigrants began arriving in the late nineteenth century, Americans, in contact with blacks, Indians, and Mexicans, became vociferous racialists. In sum, even before the Civil War, Americans had decided that peoples of large parts of this continent were incapable of creating or sharing in efficient, prosperous, democratic governments, and that American Anglo-Saxons could achieve unprecedented prosperity and power by the outward thrust of their racialism and commercial penetration of other lands. The comparatively benevolent view of the Founders of the Republic had turned into the quite malevolent ideology that other peoples could not be regenerated through the spread of free institutions.

The Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and many ultra-right-wing racist "religious" organizations adhere to a doctrine called Christian Identity. Christian Identity is not a denomination, but a loosely organized movement embracing a range of beliefs. Its foundation is the theory that Anglo-Saxons (and Aryans, in most cases) are the true descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and are the chosen people of God. Christian Identity is a bloodline religion: a belief system irrevocably tied to race. As such it lends itself to the violence, racism, and anti-Semitism of its more militant practitioners, and its growth and links to domestic terrorism warrant a better understanding of the movement. This survey of the Christian Identity Movement traces its development and beliefs, from its origins to its modern manifestations. It examines the doctrines and visions of the future of Identity communities and organizations in America. The initial chapter explores British Israelism, forerunner of most bloodline Identity groups; the oral traditions behind the movement are reviewed in the second. The third chapter outlines the American Israel, Israel Identity and bloodline Identity movements, including major figures and groups. The following chapters provide an introduction to Christian Identity itself, its general religious tenets, and post-Creation beliefs upon which much of the theory is based. Subsequent chapters describe militant bloodline and Identity groups, and individual militant Identity leaders. The final chapter explores the "Third American Revolution" predicted by these groups, a forthcoming war based on race and religion.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2014 We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? What role does Neanderthal DNA play in our genetic makeup? How did the theory of eugenics embraced by Nazi Germany first develop? How is trust passed down in Africa, and silence inherited in Tasmania? How are private companies like Ancestry.com uncovering, preserving and potentially editing the past? In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally reveals that, remarkably, it is not only our biological history that is coded in our DNA, but also our social history. She breaks down myths of determinism and draws on cutting - edge research to explore how both historical artefacts and our DNA tell us where we have come from and where we may be going.