The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism

Colin Spencer

“We do not adequately realize today how very deep within our psyche is the reverence for the consumption of meat or how ancient in our history is the ideological abstention from the slaughter of animals for food. The precise beginnings of the vegetarian ethic are lost in the priestly cults of ancient Egypt, but through the Orphic movement vegetarianism became one of the influences upon Pythagoras, who gave his name to the diet. After his death a clear thread can be traced from antiquity to present times. In the East, in India and China, as part of Hinduism and Buddhism, vegetarianism has flourished and numbers millions of converts. From the days of imperial Rome… to the most hated Christian heresy of all, Manicheanism and its progeny, the Bogomils and Cathars, abstention from meat was seen as a sign of the devil’s works, a clear rebellion against the word of God as revealed in biblical text. Persecution began once Pauline Christianity started to colonize Europe, and wherever it spread vegetarianism was reviled.” The author also presents such prominent believers as Ovid, da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Hitler.

Publisher: Univ. Press of New England
Paperback: 416 pages

The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution

Richard Breitman

Hailed by mainstream Holocaust historians as a “path-breaking book,” Architect of Genocide attempts to reply to the arguments of revisionist historians. Relying extensively on Himmler’s surviving notes and official correspondence, the author weaves an intricate and subtle web of innuendoes, facts and often compelling arguments in support of his thesis that the extermination of Europe’s Jews was ultimately the end result of a fatal attraction between two dynamic and unstable personalities—Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. The author offers the reader an abundant array of hitherto untapped sources in support of his claims. Those familiar with the works of establishment historians will welcome the new source materials which this book provides. On the other hand, revisionists will also welcome these same arguments and materials as additional fuel to keep the fires of debate burning. JB

Publisher: Univ. Press of New England
Paperback: 352 pages