In an explosive wartime book published in 1916 called The Passing of the Great Race, New York lawyer Madison Grant constructed a racial-ethnic ladder with Nordics (the new term for Anglo-Saxons) at the top and Jews, Italians, the Irish, Russians, and all non-Whites on lower rungs. He reconstructed a world history of rising and falling civilizations based on the “amount of Nordic blood in each nation.” “[The] races vary intellectually and morally just as they do physically,” Grant suggested. “It has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school
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