A popular history of Jew-hatred throughout the ages and in various countries. Dwells briefly on the definition of antisemitism and theories explaining it - psychoanalytical and psychological, socioeconomic and political, cultural and historical. Although the language and intensity of the hostility toward Jews changed from time to time, the image of the Jew as a symbol of evil was deeply rooted in Western civilization. Distinguishes between anti-Judaism and antisemitism: the former emerged in the 3rd century BCE and was supplanted by the latter in the 16th-18th centuries. Antisemitism found new, secular arguments for the old Jew-hatred; it construed the Jew mainly in racial and biological terms. Antisemitism did not disappear after the Holocaust - in the 1960s-90s it reappeared under the guise of anti-Zionism and in other forms.

Deals with attitudes of the white population of South Africa towards Jews between 1885-1940. Contends that antisemitism in South Africa in that period did not come from Europe, nor was it a result of Nazi propaganda. White South Africa had anti-Jewish stereotypes of its own. Popular aversion was directed primarily against the Eastern European immigrant, who was depicted as a dirty peddler, shunning menial work and trying to outwit farmers and city workers. Later, this image was supplemented by stereotypes of cosmopolitan financiers, and was characterized by a sense of "otherness" on both the physical and cultural levels; in a later period Jews were cast in an essentially racial mold. The 1930s added to this kind of antisemitism a new, programmatic one, whose exponents were the extremist Malan wing of the National Party and some extremist organizations. In the 1940s-50s antisemitism in South Africa subsided; it never played a significant role in the country's inner life and politics.

"In the third volume of Milton Shain's history of antisemitism in South Africa, he traces and unpacks hostile attitudes towards Jews and irrational fantasies that accompany them in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa."