Defusing the idea of Us vs Them

This looks to be the perfect moment for Mr King's resolutely humane book, even if the United States of the early 20th century isn't quite the perfect mirror

During the 1930s, the New York-based anthropologist Franz Boas grew increasingly worried about events in his native Germany. He was in his 70s, and close to retiring from Columbia University, where he taught his students to reject the junk science underpinning the country's restrictive immigration laws, colonial expansion and Jim Crow. Born into a Jewish burgher family, Boas was horrified to see how the Nazis took inspiration from Americans' path-breaking work in eugenics and state-sanctioned bigotry. He started to put the word "race" in scare quotes, calling it a "dangerous fiction."

Boas is at the centre of Charles King's Gods of