My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

(Paperback)

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An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today. Not since Thomas Friedman's groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. In this riveting narrative, Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family's story, to illuminate the pivotal moments of the Zionist century. In doing so, he also sheds new light on the problems and threats that Israel is currently facing. Beginning with his great-grandfather - a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people - Shavit recounts and analyses the diverse experiences of Israeli people, past and present: the idealist young farmer who first grew the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine's booming economy; the immigrant orphans of Europe's Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; and today's architects of Israel's foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms over the tiny country. As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be How did it come to be Can Israel survive Provocative, heartfelt, and powerfully compelling, this is 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.

Reviews

"This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. . . . [Shavit's] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East."--Simon Schama, " Financial Times"" " "Spellbinding . . . In this divided, fought-over shard of land splintered from the Middle East barely seventy years ago, Mr. Shavit's prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear."--"The Economist"" " "[A] searingly honest, descriptively lush, painful and riveting story of the creation of Zionism in Israel and [Shavit's] own personal voyage.""--The Washington Post" "[A] must-read book . . . Shavit celebrates the Zionist man-made miracle--from its start-ups to its gay bars--while remaining affectionate, critical, realistic and morally anchored. . . . His book is a real contribution to changing the conversation about Israel and building a healthier relationship with it. Before their next ninety-minute phone call, both Barack and Bibi should read it."--Thomas L. Friedman, "The New York Times"" " "[An] important and powerful book . . . [Shavit] has an undoctrinaire mind. He comes not to praise or to blame, though along the way he does both, with erudition and with eloquence; he comes instead to observe and to reflect. This is the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read. It is a Zionist book unblinkered by Zionism. It is about the entirety of the Israeli experience. Shavit is immersed in all of the history of his country. While some of it offends him, none of it is alien to him. . . . The author of "My Promised Land" is a dreamer with an addiction to reality. He holds out for affirmation without illusion. Shavit's book is an extended test of his own capacity to maintain his principles in full view of the brutality that surrounds them."--Leon Wieseltier, "The New York Times Book Review" "Shavit is a master storyteller. [Hi

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