As literacy rates have dropped in the United States, antisemitism has risen. This is tragic, as probably more than any other people, Jews were leaders in American publishing over the course of the 20th century. They helped make America a literate country. Literate people don’t fall for poisonous ideas.
In the forthcoming book Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, author Gayle Feldman tells the story of the man who founded Random House. Feldman makes the case that the Jews who entered publishing in America in the 20th century loved the U.S. and the bedrock ideas of Western philosophy, and in passing that love onto the culture, made America a freer, more prosperous, and stronger country. Books helped inoculate us against totalitarianism and prejudice.
