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David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition is an impressive scholarly accomplishment that matches a dauntingly large subject matter with a vast vault of personal knowledge. At 474 pages and 13 chapters covering more than 3000 years, it is thorough without being exhaustive.

This is a very welcome addition to the study of dress in antiquity. While studies of clothing, bodily adornment and the body language of antiquity are becoming more frequent, a volume that considers the role of religious dress and the religious meanings of dress among Jews and Christians takes this research in new directions.

This collection of ten articles was inspired by an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Manchester in 2005 on ‘The Peace in the Feud: History and Anthropology, 1955–2005’.

This is an extremely ambitious, thought-provoking, challenging and inspiring book.