William Rubinstein

William D. Rubinstein (born August 12, 1946) is a historian and author. His best-known work, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since the Industrial Revolution, charts the rise of the 'super rich', a class he sees as expanding exponentially.

Rubinstein was born in New York City, and educated at Swarthmore College and Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Rubinstein worked at Lancaster University in England from 1974 to 1975, the Australian National University in Canberra in 1976–1978, Deakin University in Victoria, Australia from 1978 to 1995, and currently works at Aberystwyth University.

Rubinstein has held chairs of history at Deakin and Aberystwyth Universities, and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, and of the Royal Historical Society.

Rubinstein was President of the Jewish Historical Society of England from 2002 to 2004 and was the editor of the articles on Britain and the Commonwealth (except Canada) in the second (2006) edition of the standard reference work, The Encyclopaedia Judaica.

Rubinstein is known for his research on the wealth-holding classes in modern Britain, making use of probate and other taxation records, in such works as Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since the Industrial Revolution (1981) and Capitalism, Culture and Decline in Britain, 1750–1990 (1991). More recently he has co-authored (with Philip Beresford) The Richest of the Rich (2007), an account of the 250 richest-ever people in British history since the Norman Conquest.

Rubinstein is published in such works as A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain (1996) and in a well-known controversial work, The Myth of Rescue (1997), which argues that the allies could not have saved more Jews during the Holocaust. Holocaust historian David Cesarani called The Myth of Rescue "a polemic that will quickly fade, while the monumental scholarship it seeks to denigrate will still be consulted by historians and students for years to come." Rubinstein in return called Cesarani's views of the subject "totally lacking in historical balance or context".

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