In this gripping, in-the-trenches account of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, award-winning journalist Matt Rees takes us deep within Israeli and Palestinian societies to reveal the fractures at the core of both. While the world focuses almost exclusively on the violent clash between the two camps, Rees steers our gaze toward their centers, exposing the internal rifts that drain each society of its ability to act cohesively. The Palestinians focus on the occupation of the West Bank, the Jewish settlers, and other Israeli actions, while the Israelis see only the intifada and the suicide bombings -- and both overlook their bitter infighting. This dazzling, groundbreaking narrative goes behind the familiar moves of the big players to reveal the individuals who are at war not only with the enemy, but also with their own people. Beginning with the astonishing story of a Hamas member who is targeted both by Israel for his hand in attacks against Jews, and by the Palestinian Authority for the revenge killing of a police officer who murdered his brother, each chapter concentrates on one or two individuals with whom Rees has personal contact, and whose stories uncover the chaos at the hearts of these two warring groups. From Palestinian car thieves and filmmakers to Israeli settlers and Holocaust survivors, Rees traces the minute and numerous ways that Yasser Arafat betrays his people and the Israeli leadership veers between placating and abusing its clashing factions. Rees has unparalleled access to groups and people on both sides of the conflict, as well as an extraordinary talent for looking beyond the usual stories. In Cain's Field, he suggests that the world has been looking in the wrong place to explain the unending battles and in the wrong place for a solution. With heartbreaking detail, incisive revelations, and terrible and often moving stories of the human beings behind the intractable attitudes and violence, Rees offers a bold new perspective on this tragic and seemingly insoluble situation. In so doing, he also offers hope -- the hope that by turning the spotlight inward, these societies might heal their internal wounds and move toward a peaceful future.

A groundbreaking work from "Time" magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief combines a dazzling narrative with a bold insight--that the deep divisions within both Israeli and Palestinian societies must be resolved before true peace can be achieved.

While this story reads like a short police report, Cain and Abel's tragic narrative plays a definitive role in the biblical saga called the great controversy. As we review their story, we might assume that if we had a chance to meet Cain and Abel, just by looking, we could easily determine who was the kind Abel and who was the mean-spirited Cain. Are you sure? Would you be surprised to learn Abel was guilty of viewing Cain from a superficial perspective that gave him a misleading impression of his brother? As we study their lives, it's easy for us to have preconceived ideas because we don't know what was going through Cain's mind until Cain's behavior plainly displays it for all of us to see. It's human to be biased. But that's not God's way of judging! This book dives deeper into the story to reveal God's perspective. I invite you to dive in with me as objectively as possible. Don't prejudge. Be persuaded by biblical evidence-wherever it leads you!

Unless we recognize the cultural context embedded in the Genesis story of Cain and Abel, the significance of Cain’s rejection and consequent violence is often lost in translation. While many interpreters highlight the theme of sibling rivalry to explain Cain’s murderous violence, Samantha Joo relates Cain’s anger and shame to the social marginalization of Kenites in ancient Israel, for whom Cain functions narratively as an ancestor. To better understand and experience Cain’s emotions in the narrative, Joo provides a method for re-contextualizing an ancient story in modern contexts. Drawing from post-colonial theories of Latin America translators, Joo focuses on analogies which simulate the “moveable event” of a story. She shows that novels like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Richard Wright’s Native Son, in which protagonists kill to escape their invisibility, capture the “event” of Cain and Abel. Consequently, readers can empathize with the anger and shame resulting from the social marginalization of Cain through the alienation of a poor, ex-university student, Raskolnikov, and the oppression of a young black man, Bigger Thomas.

The story of Cain and Abel narrates the primeval events associated with the beginnings of the world and humanity. But the presence of linguistic and grammatical ambiguities coupled with narrative gaps provided translators and interpreters with a number of points of departure for expanding the story. The result is a number of well established and interpretive traditions shared between Jewish and Christian literature. This book focuses on how the interpretive traditions derived from Genesis 4 exerted significant influence on Jewish and Christian authors who knew rewritten versions of the story. The goal is to help readers appreciate these traditions within the broader interpretive context rather than within the narrow confines of the canon.

Reflections on the game by the Sports lllustrated writer and national-bestselling author of The Swinger. Michael Bamberger has lived the game of golf as few others have—from his experience as one of the first white, college-educated caddies in 1985, to hanging out with Arnold Palmer at the Masters. This Golfing Life brings together Bamberger’s acclaimed, intimate profiles of stars (Tiger, Jack, and Annika to name a few), as well as the behind-the-scenes people who make the game what it is. In his last round of golf before an amputation, Bamberger’s high school golf coach, John Sifaneck, makes his first hole in one; John Stark gets Bamberger to relearn the game as a Scotsman; Bob Rubin, a Wall Street master-of-the-universe, builds his own golf course—one so difficult he can’t break one hundred on it; Bruce Edwards continues to caddie for Tom Watson while dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bamberger interweaves these stories with his own life in a way that will remind golfers why they love the game.