Rating: 
Summary: Careful, accessible history
Review: While it tells the grizzly history of Gypsy persecution, this book does not fall prey to political pressures to exaggerate or obfuscate, such as cause some Amazon reviewers to harshly critique it. There was no Gypsy holocaust, says Lewy, but he documents the many and varied ways that the Gypsies were brutalized, dehumanized, experimented upon, and often murdered. For many the awful truth is not enough, they must also create a politically correct legend to compete with the Jewish holocaust.One need not be an historian to appreciate this book. It is off the beaten path for most readers, but to read it is to be enriched, to understand the world more completely. For me, a test of the merit of this book is that after reading it I want to locate a general history of the Gypsies. I want to know more. Lewy does not provide insight into just the Gypsies, though, but also into the Nazis and the miserable and frightening roles played by physicians and psychiatrists. As has been detailed in histories of the Jewish holocaust, Lewy describes the essential role the medical profession played in designing and executing the most barbarous and depraved crimes against humanity. Doctors provided the intellectual justification for Nazi depravity. This is a something we should examine carefully since we Americans have also chosen to evolve into what Thomas Szasz has labeled a Therapeutic State, in which physicians have immense power. About that choice this is coincidentally a cautionary tale. I found the book to be competently written.
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