My name is Yakir Shlomo and I live in Jerusalem, Israel. If you spin a globe, it won't be easy to find the country where I live. Israel is barely the size of your thumbnail on most world maps. But I feel like I live in the center of the universe. Everyone's home is unique and my city and country are special to me. I know my home is a teeny, tiny dot if you think about the earth and the whole gigantic solar system. But it really can't be that small, since we have to make room for the 3.5 million people from all over the world who come to visit Israel during just one year.I am almost eight years old and I can understand why Israel has so many visitors. My country is an interesting place--and especially fun for children. I am glad my mother decided to help me write this book about Israel. My friends and I can't wait to tell you why we think it is so interesting to be Israeli. We hope that after you read this book, you might decide you'd like to come here and see for yourself.

Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; 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.

The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Beginning with the violent border disputes that emerged after Israel's founding in 1948, Daniel Byman charts the rise of Yasir Arafat's Fatah and leftist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--organizations that ushered in the era of international terrorism epitomized by the 1972 hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics. Byman reveals how Israel fought these groups and others, such as Hamas, in the decades that follow, with particular attention to the grinding and painful struggle during the second intifada. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace. In surveying Israel's response to terror, the author points to the coups of shadowy Israeli intelligence services, the much-emulated use of defensive measures such as sky marshals on airplanes, and the role of controversial techniques such as targeted killings and the security barrier that separates Israel from Palestinian areas. Equally instructive are the shortcomings that have undermined Israel's counterterrorism goals, including a disregard for long-term planning and a failure to recognize the long-term political repercussions of counterterrorism tactics.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

A snapshot of Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s, through the voices of its inhabitants, from the National Jewish Book Award–winning author of Judas. Notebook in hand, renowned author and onetime kibbutznik Amos Oz traveled throughout his homeland to talk with people—workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, desperate Arabs, visionaries—asking them questions about Israel’s past, present, and future. Observant or secular, rich or poor, native-born or new immigrant, they shared their points of view, memories, hopes, and fears, and Oz recorded them. What emerges is a distinctive portrait of a changing nation and a complex society, supplemented by Oz’s own observations and reflections, that reflects an insider’s view of a country still forming its own identity. In the Land of Israel is “an exemplary instance of a writer using his craft to come to grips with what is happening politically and to illuminate certain aspects of Israeli society that have generally been concealed by polemical formulas” (The New York Times).

The sequel to the acclaimed Gaza in Crisis from world-famous political analyst Noam Chomsky and Middle East historian Ilan Pappé. Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine. Praise for Gaza in Crisis by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé “This sober and unflinching analysis should be read and reckoned with by anyone concerned with practicable change in the long-suffering region.” —Publishers Weekly “Both authors perform fiercely accurate deconstructions of official rhetoric.” —The Guardian Praise for Noam Chomsky . . . “Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet.” —The New York Times Book Review “One of the radical heroes of our age . . . a towering intellect . . . powerful, always provocative.” —The Guardian . . . and Ilan Pappé “Ilan Pappé is Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.” —John Pilger, journalist, writer, and filmmaker “Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappé is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.” —New Statesman

The true story of an idealistic young American Jew committed to promoting peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. Few American college students who study abroad receive constant accusations of being a spy. But that's what happens to Michael Bassin, enrolled for a semester exchange at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. When Michael, despite advice to the contrary, reveals his Jewish identity to his new classmates, students, faculty, and the secret police respond with shock and suspicion. In between visiting Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and northern India, Michael develops die-hard enemies and loyal allies on campus. He is thrown into the role of reluctant ambassador for the Jewish people, for America, and for Israel as he responds to the conspiracies and threats made against him. Nevertheless, he finds his efforts to promote understanding are not in vain. As he develops genuine friendships, he sees the positive effects of face-to-face interaction with people who had never met a Jew before. But Michael's fight for peace doesn't end with his university experience. He moves to Israel and joins the Israeli army as a combat Arabic translator, becoming the face and voice of his unit during both friendly and hostile interactions with Palestinians in the West Bank. While enforcing an occupation about which he feels conflicted, Michael once again finds that person to person relationships provide the best path to peace in the Middle East.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything is Illuminated and We are the Weather - a rich and moving novel about modern family lives and the ties that bind 'Towering and glorious: a tale of social, familial and marital breakdown and the End of the World. The funniest literary novel I have ever read' The Times 'A rich, beautifully written, ambitious and grandly moving novel, which looks both at the world at large and at the deepest concerns of individual lives' Evening Standard 'Lays bare the interior of a marriage with such intelligence and deep feeling and pitiless clarity, it's impossible to read it and not re-examine your own family' Time 'Astonishing. So sad and so funny and so wry' Scotland on Sunday Jacob and Julia Bloch are about to be tested . . . By Jacob's grandfather, who won't go quietly into a retirement home. By the family reunion, that everyone is dreading. By their son's heroic attempts to get expelled. And by the sexting affair that will rock their marriage. A typical modern American family, the Blochs cling together even as they are torn apart. Which is when catastrophe decides to strike . . . Confronting the enduring question of what it means to be human with inventiveness, playfulness and compassion, Here I Am is a great American family novel for our times, an unmissable read for fans of Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon, a masterpiece about how we live now.