The author strips himself entirely of race prejudice and almost whimsically creates from myth, from history, from literature and present day tendencies a composite Israel stamped with characteristics of imagination and fact. “The reader does not at once find out what the ‘spectre’ is. At first it seems to be a spectral fear that the Jew is to crowd out all competitors in the struggle for existence.... Later it comes out that the really troublesome ‘spectre’ in the writer’s mind is the domain of religious speculation.” (Outlook.)
| * | Critic. 47: 581. D. ‘05. 25w. |
[*] “Mr. Warner negatives too much and constructs too little.” Edith J. Rich.
| + — | Dial. 39: 302. N. 16, ‘05. 1360w. |
“The merit of the book is that it sincerely attempts to put into a single volume a literary view of a very difficult subject.”
| + | Ind. 59: 991. O. 26, ‘05. 530w. |
“A sort of hotch-potch of anecdote and quotation, legend and fact, held together by a strain of comment, now ironical, now impassioned, which is not likely to convince, but is generally diverting.”
| — | N. Y. Times. 10: 617. S. 23, ‘05. 350w. |
“The book is cleverly written, and makes many good hits at shining marks of folly; but that it is, as announced, ‘an extraordinary’ book, except in wrongheadedness, does not appear.”
| + — | Outlook. 81: 334. O. 7, ‘05. 300w. |