The Literary Mafia is not a book about Jewish cultural accomplishment or the Jewish love of learning or even about how the People of the Book—openly discriminated against in American higher education and effectively barred from tenure at America’s most prestigious universities—gained a foothold in the New York book industry. Like other conspiracy-laden critiques about Jews, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the recent rants of Viktor Orbán, The Literary Mafia is about perceived Jewish power—the rule being that the presence of more than one Jew in a room demonstrates the existence of a malign Jewish cabal.
