‘Antisemitism’ is traditionally used to describe prejudice and violent action directed at Jews solely by virtue of their ethnic, national, or religious affiliation. Today, it has increasingly become a weapon for stigmatizing legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and support for the Palestinian people’s rights. A ‘biography of the word’, as provided by this book, is therefore badly needed. . In the first part, Mazower rejects the idea of a timeless, unique, and everlasting ‘hatred of Jews’ running from the Christian Middle Ages to the present. Instead, he chooses to study antisemitism in specific historical contexts, such as the rise of ethno-nationalism and resistance to capitalist modernity in the late nineteenth century and Adolf Hitler’s hunt for scapegoats after the World War I defeat. Closer to our own time, Mazower argues that the use of the a-word was mobilized after the Six-Day War in 1967, which the Israeli authorities portrayed as a struggle on behalf of Jews wherever they lived. In the following decades this led to a marked upswing in research on antisemitism and in the number of museums and commemorative events dedicated to the Holocaust. The author also links this to ideas of a chosen people with a biblical right (and duty) to subjugate the whole of historic Palestine as a Jewish nation-state. He also convincingly dismisses the 2016 definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, used in the US and Europe to stifle independent research, dismiss teachers, cancel billion-dollar grants and meet pro-Palestinian activism with military troops. This is a most topical book and a welcome addition to his earlier work on European history and the Third Reich as an empire.