National Bestseller Winner of the National Book Award Updated with a New Chapter Author of The World Is Flat and That Used to Be Us One of the most thought-provoking books ever written about the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem remains vital to our understanding of this complex and volatile region of the world. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman drew upon his ten years of experience reporting from Lebanon and Israel to write this now-classic work of journalism. Rich with anecdote, history, analysis, and autobiography, From Beirut to Jerusalem will continue to shape how we see the Middle East for many years to come.

"A powerful account, by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, of his transformation from a young man who'd grown up in the heart of Israel's elite and served proudly in its military into a fearless advocate of nonviolent struggle and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis. His journey is mirrored in many ways the transformation his father, a much-decorated Israeli general, had undergone three decades earlier. Alice Walker contributed a foreword to the first edition in which she wrote, "There are few books on the Israel/Palestine issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one." In the new Epilogue he takes readers to South Africa, East Asia, several European countries, and the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself."--Amazon.com.

A hero in each of Israel's wars, perhaps the most daring and successful commander in Israel's extraordinary military history, Ariel Sharon has always been a warrior, whether the enemies were hostile Arab nations, terrorists, Time magazine, or rival politicians. The public man is well known—aggressive in battle, hard-line in politics—but the private man has always been obscured by Sharon's dazzling career and powerful personality. In this compelling and dramatic autobiography, the real Sharon appears for the first time: a man of complex depths and passions, a loving father, a man of courage and compassion.

"The definitive memoir of one of Israel's most influential soldier-statesmen and one-time Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, with insights into forging peace in the Middle East. In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history--Ehud Barak--set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace. It was a moment of truth. It was one of many in a life intertwined, from the start, with that of Israel. Born on a kibbutz, Barak became commander of Israel's elite special forces, then army Chief of Staff, and ultimately, Prime Minister. My Country, My Life tells the unvarnished story of his--and his country's--first seven decades; of its major successes, but also its setbacks and misjudgments. He offers candid assessments of his fellow Israeli politicians, of the American administrations with which he worked, and of himself. Drawing on his experiences as a military and political leader, he sounds a powerful warning: Israel is at a crossroads, threatened by events beyond its borders and by divisions within. The two-state solution is more urgent than ever, not just for the Palestinians, but for the existential interests of Israel itself. Only by rediscovering the twin pillars on which it was built--military strength and moral purpose--can Israel thrive"--

"Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person's camp in Austria, to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a "secular Jew." With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the "chosen people" myth and its "holocaust industry." Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what "Jewish" means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism"--

This autobiography of William G. Dever is unabashedly his story that offers not only candid reflections on his life, but also on the remarkable generation of giants in archaeology in Israel and the evolving history of the fields of biblical and Israeli archaeology. Chapters cover the ups and downs in both his life and career with brutally honesty. His memoir concludes with a postscript on the likely future of biblical archaeology, and an annotated bibliography provides a guide for serious readers who wish to explore some of the scholarly literature to flesh out Dever's narrative--

The compelling autobiography of Israel's preeminent photojournalist, illustrated with his most memorable images. Today, photojournalist David Rubinger stands at the peak of his profession: a winner of the Israel Prize for services to the media and a fixture on the masthead of Time, he is the only photographer whose work is on permanent display at the Knesset, Israel’s legislature. In this fascinating volume, he reports his own story, which in many ways reflects the history of Israel that he has recorded so faithfully with his camera. Born in Vienna in 1924, he emigrated to British Palestine in 1939 and developed a passion for photography while serving in the British army’s Jewish Brigade. After fighting in Israel’s War of Independence, he became a professional news photographer, reporting on each of his young nation’s subsequent wars from the front lines, at first for the Israeli media and later as a correspondent for Time-Life. He photographed all of Israel’s leaders, many of whom have allowed him a remarkable degree of access to their lives; Ariel Sharon said, “I trust Rubinger even though I know he doesn’t vote for me.” But Rubinger has not confined his reporting to war and politics; by photographing the successive waves of Jewish immigrants from Europe, the Arab world, Russia, and Ethiopia, he has also created a valuable record of Israel’s transformation from a country of six hundred thousand to one of seven million. In recounting his eventful career, Rubinger proves himself a gifted raconteur, sharing anecdotes of the many leading personalities he has photographed and telling the stories behind his most famous pictures, many of which are reproduced here at full-page size. Also illustrated are a selection of Rubinger’s never-before-published personal photographs, which provide vivid behind-the-scenes glimpses into the fast-paced and sometimes daring work of a photojournalist. Both a personal account of one man’s life with the camera and a visual document of the birth of a nation, Israel through My Lens is an essential book for anyone with an interest in Israeli history or the art of photojournalism.

An informative memoir of kibbutz life that reveal a piece of Israel's early story that should not be forgotten.

A biographical excavation of one of the world’s great, troubled cities A remarkable view of one of the world’s most beloved and troubled cities, Adina Hoffman’s Till We Have Built Jerusalem is a gripping and intimate journey into the very different lives of three architects who helped shape modern Jerusalem. The book unfolds as an excavation. It opens with the 1934 arrival in Jerusalem of the celebrated Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany who must reckon with a complex new Middle Eastern reality. Next we meet Austen St. Barbe Harrison, Palestine’s chief government architect from 1922 to 1937. Steeped in the traditions of Byzantine and Islamic building, this “most private of public servants” finds himself working under the often stifling and violent conditions of British rule. And in the riveting final section, Hoffman herself sets out through the battered streets of today’s Jerusalem searching for traces of a possibly Greek, possibly Arab architect named Spyro Houris. Once a fixture on the local scene, Houris is now utterly forgotten, though his grand Armenian-tile-clad buildings still stand, a ghostly testimony to the cultural fluidity that has historically characterized Jerusalem at its best. A beautifully written rumination on memory and forgetting, place and displacement, Till We Have Built Jerusalem uncovers the ramifying layers of one great city’s buried history as it asks what it means, everywhere, to be foreign and to belong.

Egypt's indigenous Jewish population comprised Arabic-speaking Rabbanite and Karaite Jews, some of whom had been in the country since the early Islamic era. Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 took refuge in Egypt, and their numbers were augmented in the mid-nineteenth century by Sephardic immigrants. Originally welcomed elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, these Spanish Jews came to Egypt seeking economic opportunity in the era of Suez Canal construction and the cotton boom. The late nineteenth century brought Ashkenazi Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. The different groups formed a heterogeneous community of cosmopolitan hybrids, which was both an element of strength and a factor in its eventual demise. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry examines the history of the Egyptian Jewish community after 1948, focusing on three major areas: the life of the majority of the community, which remained in Egypt from the1948 Arab-Israeli War until the aftermath of the 1956 Suez/Sinai War; the dispersion and reestablishment of Egyptian Jewish communities in the United states, France, and Israel; and contested memories of Jewish life in Egypt since President Anwar al-Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Beinin argues that the experiences of Egyptian Jews cannot be adequately accounted for by either Egyptian nationalist or Zionist narratives. Fusing history, ethnography, literary analysis, and autobiography, Joel Beinin conducts an interdisciplinary investigation into identity, dispersion, and the retrieval of identity that is relevant for anyone interested in Egypt, the Jewish diaspora, or the formation of cultures and identities.

Praise for Coming Together, Coming Apart ""Interesting conversation is Israel's most ingratiating commodity, and this is an especially interesting one. To read Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers--an American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers. Gordis's conversational narrative is irresistible."" --Alan dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel ""Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert, or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story--of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a jihadist war. As a fellow Jerusalemite, I feel a profound debt to Gordis for explaining what it means to raise a family in the middle of a terror zone, and the courage that average Israelis instinctively display in maintaining the pretense of normal life. Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book."" --Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic