The Falls

Spanning millennia, The Falls is an astonishing excavation of racism, slavery, and violence. With incredible precision, this miraculous work begins with the Canaanites and takes a magnifying glass to every culture, religion, and people that has existed since. Weinberger leaves no stone unturned as he shows that “there are slaves in every era, and—except for criminals or the disastrously improverished—slaves are ethnic others, conquered or devastated peoples.” This tour-de-force recapitulates 3,000 years of history in a cascade of telling facts, to uncover the deep roots of contemporary prejudices. And now, as racism again rears its ugly head in everyday life, “The Falls”—alarming when first published in 2000—amounts to a call to action, as American racism has moved beyond dog whistles into open and often gleeful public discourse, reporting live daily from the White House and the Pentagon.