Some believe that it is something that we have done, or that Israel has done, which has provoked such lethal hatreds. But the roots of all this go back long before the modern state of Israel was founded and before American involvement in the Middle East.

 "What Went Wrong?" is the title of a brilliant and readable capsule history of the evolution of Islamic civilization in the Middle East by the preeminent scholar on that subject, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton. This little book is an education in itself on a subject where education is very much needed.

 Among the best books on the welfare state and its consequences -- intended and unintended, here and overseas -- are "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple, "Do-Gooders" by Mona Charen, and "FDR's Folly" by Jim Powell.

 Dalrymple's book is an insightful and devastating eyewitness account of the white underclass in Britain, which is remarkably similar to the black underclass in America. Clearly it is not race but the welfare state behind the counterproductive and self-destructive attitudes and lifestyles of both groups.

 Mona Charen's book is an incisive critique of the American liberals' welfare state and Powell's book traces the roots of that welfare state to the politically clever but socially disastrous policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

 My own book this year, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" is apparently one which many liberal and conservative publications alike have found too hot to handle. There have not been even ten reviews of it in print -- and yet it has been as high as 11th in sales on amazon.com.

 Thank heaven for talk radio, C-SPAN and the Fox News Channel.

 My thesis in the title essay of this book is that the reasons for black-white income and other differences have been grossly misunderstood and, as a result, many things advocated to deal with those differences have largely made matters worse.

 Other essays in this book argue that antisemitism has likewise been grossly misunderstood, as has the history of slavery, and of Germans, as part of a twisted view of history in general.

 Merry Christmas -- if we are still allowed to say that.