Published on Reviews in History (https://reviews.history.ac.uk ) Debates on the Holocaust Review Number: 1160 Publish date: Tuesday, 1 November, 2011 Author: Tom Lawson ISBN: 9780719074493 Date of Publication: 2010 Price: £17.99 Pages: 320pp. Publisher: Manchester University Press Place of Publication: Manchester Reviewer: Dan Michman Scholarly research on the Holocaust, carried out in many disciplines but especially in the field of history, is dynamic and-- constantly progressing; several giant leaps in its expansion can be discerned, mainly since the end of the 1970s. Testifying to the vibrancy and ‘the sheer scale of contemporary Holocaust historiography’ (as Tom Lawson rightly points out in his introduction to the book reviewed here) is the fact that the library of Yad Vashem, Israel's research and memorial institution for the Holocaust, has in the last two decades enriched its collection with some 4000 titles every year! Consequently, historiographical overviews of the interpretational debates, schools, stages in the development and the impact of political, social and cultural developments on research etc. are much needed – both for scholars in, and students entering, the field, as well as for the growing audience interested in the topic, both laymen and educators (Lawson states that ‘this book is primarily designed as an introductory text for students and teachers’ (p. ix)). Nevertheless, the number of such overviews, especially analytical ones, has remained limited (1) , perhaps as a result from the fear by scholars ‘that any attempt to interrogate its history can only be partial and incomplete’ (p. 1). Therefore, first of all, Lawson should be lauded for his courage in attempting this challenge; but then he has also succeeded in writing a quite comprehensive – though not unproblematic – analysis of most of the major debates in the field, while colligating an abundance of literature into his most readable narrative. Lawson's book is part of a series called Issues in Historiography, which takes on diverse historical ‘events’ (the Norman Conquest, The French and English Revolutions) and processes (the American Civil War era, the rise of the British Empire, black civil rights in America). As such, by showing ‘the ways in which the Holocaust has been rendered and represented as History’, that is, by revealing ‘the complexity of historians efforts to uncover the Holocaust past’, the field of Holocaust research is used as a test-case ‘to demonstrate that historians and history-writing have an enduring social and political relevance’ (p. 2); Lawson emphasizes this point because he believes that the Holocaust has been left outside the notion which is by now a historical consensus in the West, that ‘past and present collide in their markedly provisional narratives’. He is right to a considerable extent in stating this point and it is justified by both in the need to explore the vast area of ‘sub-events’ in the Holocaust (i.e. in establishing what should be included in it) and in the quite unique accompanying phenomenon of Holocaust denial; nevertheless, since the end of the 1980s there are definitely enough Holocaust historians who deal with the topic while subscribing to the above- mentioned historiographical consensus. In this context, it would have been rewarding for the readers if Lawson had dedicated in the introduction at least a paragraph to the path-breaking conference organized by