Rating: 
Summary: exhaustively researched and well written
Review: makes bernal look silly...read black athena, then black athena revisited, then this as a dessert and you'll see that bernal has no legs to stand on....
Rating: 
Summary: Fun's over; now it's time to free your mind
Review: Lefkowitz' book NOT OUT OF AFRICA is a fascinating political treatise. It is not literary, historical, or even properly sociological in nature. As entertainment--if you are the type to be entertained by such things--you will enjoy this book greatly. But it isn't about Afrocentrism, or scholarship. It's about a marketable myth of the 19th century intellectual world, generated by the Paleolithic mendacities still extant in the psyche of American culture. Sublimated mendacities that codependently need the pagan/Christian-type debates on the supposed heresy that is Afrocentrism to give themselves relevance in the 21st Century, where they have none.A quote of Lefkowitz toward the end of NOT OUT OF AFRICA is telling of both the stated raison d'Etre of the book and my point: "Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt...But the question, AND MANY OTHERS LIKE IT, should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal his philosophy, YOU ARE PREPARED TO IGNORE OR TO CONCEAL A SUBSTANTIAL BODY OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE THAT PROVES THE CONTRARY (emphasis mine). Once you start doing that, you can have no SCIENTIFIC or even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university." Has anyone noticed, however, that the circular logic of the literary/historical methodology deified in NOT OUT OF AFRICA, with Lefkowitz' view of the ancient Classical world and its make-up, is immediately claimed to be the only respectable one for looking at the ancient world before the book even begins? So triumphantly so, that she comfortably uses the word "scientific" metaphorically in justifying her defense of it, without the slightest fear of an actual *scientific* challenge? This, not her fearful diagnosis of the diseases of Multiculturalism or postmodernism infecting today's Universities, is the foundation upon which NOT OUT OF AFRICA is built. Such myopia could only be championed in the name of scholarship via knowing that challenges to the Classicist scholarly perspective of any sort, *by anyone,* would be silenced as heresy before they're even heard as a matter of course-that is, in the intellectual/political climate to which she is accustomed. The science of Metrology, as has been studied in recent decades by Historians of Science at MIT, is the archetypal example of this. Despite the four-odd century history of the science and the sociological implications of its untold volumes of findings, the science of metrology is one that was ostracized from the modern University system of the late 19th century, and became almost obliterated completely during the rise of Nazism in Western Europe and the Jim Crow segregationism of America in the early 20th. Scholars of Classicism who are aware of its existence will not even mention it--with, considering their biases, good reason. What Lefkowitz in NOT OUT OF AFRICA says is in danger of happening to truth in our democracy via postmodernism in the university is a product of its very architecture; that which proponents of certain antithetical albeit less politically powerful schools of thought have grown painfully used to for many generations. Lefkowitz in NOT OUT OF AFRICA says she is protecting knowledge from sociology. In reality she is merely protecting the sociology of knowledge as it already exists. And just in case you were wondering: the science--repeat, science--of Metrology not so ironically substantiates the most cherished theories about ancient Africa and its influence on the Near East and Mediterranean cultures of the "Afrocentric" school. Metrology pokes so many holes in the foundational rhetorical arguments NOT OUT OF AFRICA that any ONE of the other ancient world perspectives from the sciences like sociobiology, linguistics or comparative religions (she does know the name of the Greek goddess *Athena* comes from the Egyptian *Neith*, doesn't she?), combined with the findings of metrology, yields a world of paradigm shifting findings that make Lefkowitz' supposedly noble obsession with black male anthropologists questionable at best. I suggest anyone who is finished shouting for joy over how Lefkowitz, with NOT OUT OF AFRICA, saved civilization do the following: 1) read Giorgio de Santillana's CRIME OF GALILEO, and see how this marketable illusion of the virginal University system and its supposed pure search for knowledge cannot hide the fact that its "innocence" (remember craniometry?) has been continuously stolen and restolen by Euro-politics since its inception in Western Civilization. Then 2) read AT THE HANDS OF PERSONS UNKNOWN: THE LYNCHING OF BLACK AMERICA by Philip Dray, and PLAYING THE RACE CARD: MELODRAMAS IN BLACK AND WHITE FROM UNCLE TOM TO O.J. SIMPSON by Linda Williams. These two books in tandem will reveal two important things about the structure and political raison d'Etre of Lefkowitz' NOT OUT OF AFRICA that talking about Classicism and the supposed sins of Afrocentrism won't. First, Dray's anatomy will reveal why Lefkowitz is so unconsciously comfortable with--in fact, perhaps proud of--the intellectually brutal way in which she endeavors to strangle this antithetical approach to her beloved discipline (the offensive cover of the book alone makes that argument for me). Secondly, in regard to its popularity, Williams will reveal why the collective unconscious of so many in Conservative American society is both so easily excited by and blindly supportive of what are the hidden "Birth of a Nation" metaphors in Lefkowitz' approach to this topic. (Lefkowitz, in NOT OUT OF AFRICA, basically tries to make the discipline of Classicism and the modern University system into the metaphorical Southern gentle ladies of Reconstruction, whose "virtue" must be protected from those black Mandingo Afrocentrics.) And then, 3) look up on a good Internet search engine the word METROLOGY and the name LIVIO STECHINNI, professor of the history of science at MIT...and be changed. Globalization hasn't just replaced the Plantation economy of the late 19th century South. It also, obviously to Lefkowitz' chagrin, replaced it in 21st Century intellectual culture. That Plantation-minded culture, not scholarship or civilization, is what is finally dying.
Rating: 
Summary: SOMETHING proudly masquerading as scholarship; but what?
Review: The problem I seem to have with this book is not so much the contents but its overall structure and design, which reveals volumes about both its actual purpose and the value of its theme. This can be seen clearly via Lefkowitz' sub-strategy of focusing on the work of C.A. Diop, the highly influential Senegalese anthropologist. She seems to assume that by declaring his scholarship dubious or even mythological (because of the many scholars influenced by him the past couple of decades) the point is proven that, for the most part, the "Afrocentric" perspective in Classical scholarship (for lack of a better word) is at best suspect. The very standards of scholarship, philosophy, ethics and erudition Lefkowitz proposes to be defending, however, as seen with a keen eye by the very structure of both the book and its argument, are the ones she seems to have betrayed to prove her point. What exactly are Lefkowitz' credentials regarding the disciplines of Egyptology and anthropology? What does she believe about the findings of mythographers from Frazer (GOLDEN BOUGH) to Godfrey Higgins (ANACALYPSIS) to Gerald Massey (ANCIENT EGYPT, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD; BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS) to Burkert (ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION), to MacRitchie (ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITONS), to Roheim; to Campbell (POWER OF MYTH; HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, etc.) to Camille Paglia (SEXUAL PERSONAE)? What does she think of Nietzsche (BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, etc.)? What are her credentials regarding the history of the sciences, particularly the field of astronomy (exemplified in history by the work of the 19th century astronomer J. Norman Lockyer in DAWN OF ASTRONOMY)? What does she think of the work of the French late 18th century scientific historian Dupuis' LES ORIGINE DES TOUT LES CULTES [The Origin of All Cults])? Or, perhaps the most important, the science of metrology? (Metrology is the historical/mathematical study of the ancient science of mensuration [measurement]. It fell out of favor in Europe during the ascension of anti-Semitism in the late 19th century; mostly because of the uncomfortable implications its findings proclaimed regarding the *Pre*-Pre-Hellenic source of ancient Greece's entire system of measurement, from weight to length to time--arguably the foundation of all high civilizations.) How do these works, scholars and disciplines shed a new scientific light on the sacred literary cows of her beloved discipline, Classicism, and its evolution? What does she think of the term "sociology of knowledge" as it applies to the history of Classicism in that context, and does it have any relevance to her? Should it have any relevance to us? And what does Lefkowitz think of the new breed of Israeli/Jewish archaeologists who are tracing more and more aspects of ancient Greece's culture back to its Hebrew/Semitic influences in the same way the "Afrocentrics" are tracing so many of them back to ancient North Africa, aka Egypt (or is it just easier to risk being called a racist for your views in today's conservative world than it is an anti-Semite, and she doesn't ever plan to say)? You will not find the answers to any of these questions in this book, by design. And without these questions being answered, whether they are openly asked (as I am doing) or just intuitively (as many, whether they admit it or not, eventually will), the thesis of the book as a whole becomes shaky and its stated raison d'Etre profoundly suspect. A cursory glance at even a portion of the books I've mentioned, however, will reveal that virtually ALL of these thinkers and scholars, in their varied disciplines and time periods, agree more with the findings of Afrocentrism than with Lefkowitz, or her book's quasi-sociological theme. Why have virtually all of the above writers and thinkers been omitted in large part from her book, and as such, her intellectual scrutiny, so she could focus on today's Black male intellectuals? In the end my biggest problem with NOT OUT OF AFRICA is obvious--and it has nothing to do with my feelings on Afrocentrism. Lefkowitz' strategy used to debunk Afrocentrism as pagan heresy (beginning with debunking Diop via his methodology but not honestly wrestling with the most substantive aspects of his findings) is both pagan and heretical itself. This loaded intellectual gun of a strategy she's used will mortally wound whatever idea it is pointed at whenever it is fired, regardless of its validity...why all the hoopla about it picking off Black anthropologists, as opposed to White Classicists? Lefkowitz' ironically triumphant refusal to entertain the idea that a paradigm shift is taking place in Classical scholarship (initiated, as most paradigm shifts are, from outside the field) *hidden in a sociological attack on African-American perspectives on it*, reveals something profoundly uncomfortable, yet awfully familiar. It reveals, underneath the laudable superego of her reputation and erudition, a pretty nasty, 19th Century Eurocentric id that is afraid of the quasi-religious chinks in Classicism's academic armor becoming more and more visible to the 21st Century with each passing day. Read this book with an open mind, and you'll hear the sound of it closing before you reach the last page. She's an eloquent writer (hence the three stars), but given 1) the importance of courageously confronting the sociology of knowledge as it has existed for centuries in the scholarly world (not just when Black men in America began being allowed to get graduate degrees in anthropology), and 2) the degree to which she purposely failed to do so for the benefit of capitalizing financially on the "reverse-racism" Zeitgeist running through conservative America, this is not what true scholarship is about. The last word on this whole issue will probably come from her detractors.
Rating:
Summary: An example of Cultural Terrorism
Review: Not out of Africa, How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. By Mary Lefkowitz. This book explains the other side of the cultural war. Lefkowitz's views are 180 degrees out of phase with African/African American scholars. She is a Classiest and professor in humanities at Wellesley College. What this means is that she has been trained to know something about the Greeks (Classical European Civilization). Her position as expressed in her book is simple. Greeks developed their own civilization, invented philosophy, medicine etc. with no influence from any other ethnic group, especially Africans. She implies that all African/African American scholars a crackpots perpetrating a harmful hoax on the public and members of their ethnic group. Her book offers no credible evidence to support her claims. She attempts to mount a counter argument to Black Athena. However she focuses on unimportant technical matters she claims are errors never addressing the main issues. For instance she does not address whether or not there was a German school of Caucasian racist the revised ancient history. Without addressing this issue the book has no were to go. That is, she does not mount and argument that there was no such school that created the Aryan Model. Nor does she argue that there was such a school. In short whether there is or is not an Ancient Model and an Aryan model is never addressed So the book focuses on inconsequential things like what color Cleopatra was. If you have seen the movie Cleopatra (as a White person) you will recall that the movie portrays the population of an African country as being majority Caucasian. As historically inaccurate and ridiculous as that move is, this is the kind of history Lefkowitz supports and would have others believe. Naturally the question of were the Kamitans a majority Black African population is not addressed. Most of the book is filled with this type of intellectual gymnastics that avoids the major questions of the cultural war. She makes some comments about KMT (Egypt) and African culture. Unfortunately her comments only demonstrate her complete cultural illiteracy regarding KMT in particular and Africans in general. The fact of her illiteracy was further brought out in a series of TV debates she and her co-author engaged in against Dr. Ben and professor Bernal. In all cases her team was destroyed, as a result of African cultural illiteracy. She may claim to know something about Greeks, but she is completely uneducated regarding KMT (Egypt) or Africans. So how would she know if something she knows nothing about had an influence on Greece? It is important to read this book to understand this first meager attempt, by anti-Humanists, and cultural terrorists to counter the cultural literacy offensive in the latest battle of the cultural war. It is interesting to note that the other side is aware that they are under serious attack. They are trying to mount a counter attack. However their first attempt is very weak. You can be sure they will not make the mistake of underestimating the African centered side of the war again.
The cover of Out of Africa typifies their counter attack tactics. It is a picture of Socrates wearing a Malcolm X baseball hat. The implication is that this is not a serious dialogue between two opposing schools of scholastic thought, but rather a bad joke that will go away. The disrespect of the books cover not withstanding. Cultural terrorists are finding out that the African centered movement is a serious business, with well-armed soldiers that are not going away anytime soon. Sending poorly read lightweights against great Africanist scholars is folly. Mrs. Lefkowitz is the poster child for cultural terrorism. She by her own admission is affiliated with right wing socially conservative publications in America like the New Republic. Her funding also seems to come from the American right wing. So her work should be read with an African gain of salt. Note, that "social conservative" is modern doublespeak for white supremacist, keep America a White Christian nation at any cost. African Cultural Literacy exposes Cultural Poisoning. The old White supremacist propaganda will not fly in the new millenium. Lefkowitz's failed attack on Black Athena makes that clear. If someone says that there are White Africans they must prove it. If someone says that a civilization that existed next to the greatest civilization in the ancient world was not influenced at all by that civilization, Kamit (Egypt) that preceded them by thousands of years, they must prove it. If someone says that the Greeks actually influenced the Kamitans, who built the great African pyramids (still standing). Demonstrating their technological and philosophical knowledge. Then that person must show that the Greeks built something comparable that would demonstrate that they possessed some knowledge that was capable of influencing Africans in Kamit. Simple-minded myth and opinion, will no longer successfully masquerade as historical fact. African history will never again be disrespected. Africans/African Americans will no longer stand for raciest scholarship, or anti-humanism in any form.
Lefkowitz's book demonstrates the uselessness of name calling and disrespecting the classical civilization of others. What we need from American scholars is a unified reality based history, which respects all cultures and their contributions to humanity. A mutually respectful honest presentation of history will give American children the best chance of finally bringing racial harmony to America. Down with cultural poisoning up with cultural literacy for a more effective America. Note: Since I first wrote this review my first paperback has been published. DoubleSpeak in Black and White is the first self-help book designed to help individuals restore and/or improve their Cultural Health. And it is here on Amazon ISBN 0595228585.
Rating: 
Summary: How Judaism became an excuse to teach Myth as history.
Review: Me thinks Ms. Lefkowitz doth protest too much. I have one question for her, Are Massey and Breasted Afrocentrists? I will give her credit for conceding that the Ancient Egyptians were Africans.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth is out there
Review: You just have to find it. Ignore the politically correct crowds who are too cowardly to confront Afrocentrists and the lies they promote.
This book uses actual data to completely blow the roof off that disgrace of a book: "Black Athena." Luckily, this is finally being recognized. We all know Bernal for the fraud he is, and for the Afrocentrics, well...let's not humiliate them anymore. They certainly got on the wrong horse. Too bad for them, there is a lot of evidence proving Africa did not do much re: influence of Europe.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening
Review: The wonderful scholarship of this work is encouraging for those of us in academia. It is done more honestly than "Out of Africa" which we all know has a political agenda. If not for the current PC arena (Which if you disagree with, you are a racist), this stupid notion of Bernal's gets laughed out of any publisher's office.
Rating:
Summary: Tasteless cover, sketchy research
Review: I expected a more controlled, less emotional approach from a Wellesley scholar. Are there inflated claims about nonwhite contributions to civilization in antiquity? Sure. I expected Lefkowitz to burst some balloons. In fact, I was hoping she would, as silly claims push out the legitimate ones. "NOT Out of Africa," however, is over the top, starting with its racist cover (the cloth version), showing a very white man, an alabaster bust of an ancient Greek, wearing something very black, a baseball cap emblazoned with the letter X, momeorializing Malcolm X, a very popular hat in 1996, the year of publication, among young black men. This symbolized, I assume, the defiling of a superior culture (ancient Greece) by an inferior one, modern black America. I note, too, that the book was released in March, Black History Month in the U.S. Was this extra insult necessary? On the first page, Lefkowitz states that "...the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science," despite the fact that Aristotle and Plato both credit Egypt as the birthplace of Greek science. She not only opposes claims of non-Greek achievements, but opposes "any attempt to question the authencticity of ancient Greek Civilization." That is, don't even try. The matter is closed. She says that to do so threatens the "ideals of American democracy" and invites a new holocaust. "Not long ago," she writes, "symbolic myths of ethnic supremacy were responsible for the deaths of whole populations." If you question the Eurocentric model of history, you are a Nazi.
Beyond that, her scholarship is flimsy. She doesn't understand that "astrology" in the ancient world meant "astronomy" (today's term), and doubts that Democritus ever studied geometry in Egypt. (She must be unaware that Democritus himself wrote that he studied there, bragging of this because he said the Egyptians were the world's best geometers.) She has a double standard. When Diodorus and Herodotus praise the Greeks, she salutes them. When they praise nonwhite peoples, she rakes them over the coals. In fact she criticizes Herodotus for traveling to different lands and doing on-site research. I think Ms. Lefkowitz herself could benefit from getting out of the office from time to time. A good book on this topic would be welcome, by someone more in control emotionally and with greater knowledge of the ancient world, white and nonwhite.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent scholarship
Review: When I first picked this book, I was shocked to learn that such politically motivated and factually inaccurate statements are propounded in our universities. I like how the book discusses these inaccuracies and the truth behind them. I find it scary that people like Mr. Lewis and others have to hide behind accusations of racism to fight an argument and its underlying facts that are clearly written and meant as an argument not as some racist propoganda. History is not literature. It is not meant for each ethnic group to interpret it how they wish. It, too, is based on science and fact finding. This book goes through the facts and the science and dispels the myths. I found it interesting and easy to read (it avoids the "doctorate style" of writing).
The nay-sayers and racism-accusers seem to rely on their own racism to justify thier own ignorance. It is also funny to point out that this why she wrote the book. Obviously these readers did not read it or chose to ignore the facts. Facts that are quite hard to disprove.
Africa has its own interesting and valuable history that is equally important. It should be studied. Why does it have to be the basis of Aristotle to be important?
History is not always politically correct, nor are its underlying events. Why does it have to be contorted to fit a narrow view? I wish people would quit throwing up a smoke signal of racism when their counter arhuments to this book fall flat.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Biased Viewpoint, two stars for effort
Review: How can we expect Ms. Lefkowitz to be truly unbiased in her research of this matter if she has made her fortune by writing books exhalting Rome and Greece as the greatest civilizations ever. She gives excuse after excuse of why ancient egypt (real name kamit) could not of been an african civilization, when all one has to do is to learn how to read a little bit of hieroglyphs and go to egypt and read for yourself (she is betting that you won't do this, cause if you did...). She claims that ancient egyptians separated themselves from Africans when the opposite is true and documented on the walls of egypt. Ask her to explain the religions of Yoruba and Santeria if they were so isolated. Ancient egyptians themselves claimed they came from the area now known as ethiopia/somalia which have always been occupied by blacks. Ms. Lefkowitz is one of the BIASED so called scholars who on one hand downgrade what was accomplished in ancient egypt, but on the other hand vehemently claim that it could not of been done by blacks. She has written this book book to protect the livelihood of her Roman/Greek book writing business from the truth. Afrocentrism may be wrong at times by claiming all great civilizations as being solely black, but it has struck a balance between it and people like this author and now the truth is only begining to surface as a result of this balance. I encourage any reader of this book to do their own research on the issue to discover the truly gaping holes of logic in this piece. Do serious research and stop reading novels such as this one. And get a grip, stop thinking that just because Africans were the Mothers and Fathers of all civilization that the world is going to end for you. Accept the truth and be better for it.
Hetep
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