Books Recently Read: Israel/Palestine

Back in May 2006 I added a "Recent Reading" widget to my navigation menu, which displayed book covers for the five (now nine) most recent books I have been reading. The idea came from Billmon's Whiskey Bar blog. I appreciated the tips, and figured I'd add a few of my own. Since then I've added new books to the top of the list (usually mid-way, can't guarantee I've finished them all, but I've certainly finished most). At the time, I also went through my on-line notebooks and backfilled the list with books I mentioned or recalled reading, so the period from 2000-2006 is a bit shady (especially as to order). Also, because I never displayed more than the first five books, I didn't bother looking up the publishing details of books that (I thought then) would never be displayed. I included them only so I could search through the plain text file.

In September 2019, it occurred to me that I would like to make this list presentable: hence, this little program. Of course, then lots of other ideas popped into my head: sorting and searching, subject tags, more detailed notes -- things that need more data, if not a full-blown database. One design decision was whether to include the cover images, since their links were already in the table. Showing all of them all of the time would look clunky, so I initially decided just to offer links to the images. Then I wondered whether I could use mouseover on those links. Haven't had time to figure that out yet.

  • Ilan Pappe: A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2024, Oneworld) [cover]
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Message (2024, One World) [cover]
  • Jamie Stern-Weiner, ed: Deluge: Gaza and Israel From Crisis to Cataclysm (2024, OR Books) [cover]
  • Avi Shlaim: Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2010, Verso Books) [cover]
  • Amy Kaplan: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (2018, Harvard University Press) [cover]
  • Shlomo Avineri: The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (2017, Basic Books) [cover]
  • Linda Dittmar: Tracing Homelands: Israel, Palestine, and the Claims of Belonging (2023, Olive Branch Press) [cover]
  • Norman G Finkelstein: Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom (2018, University of California Press) [cover]
  • Tom Segev: A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (2019, Farrar Straus and Giroux) [cover]
  • Gregg Carlstrom: How Long Will Israel Survive?: The Threat From Within (2017, Oxford University Press) [cover]
  • Ilan Pappe: Ten Myths About Israel (2017, Verso Books) [cover]
  • Padraig O'Malley: The Two State Delusion: Israel and Palestine -- A Tale of Two Naratives (2015, Viking) [cover]
  • Shira Robinson: Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (2013, Stanford University Press) [cover]
  • Josh Ruebner: Shattered Hopes: Obama's Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace (2013, Verso) [cover]
  • Yuval Elizor/Lawrence Malkin: The War Within: Israel's Ultra-Orthodox Threat to Democracy and the Nation (2014, Overlook Press) [cover]
  • Ilan Pappe: The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (2014, Verso) [cover]
  • John B Judis: Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict (2014, Farrar Straus and Giroux) [cover]
  • Max Blumenthal: Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (2013, Nation Books) [cover]
  • Pamela Olson: Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair With a Homeless Homeland (2013, Seal Press) [cover]
  • Avi Raz: The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War (2013, Yale University Press) [cover]
  • Amy Dockser Marcus: Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2008, Penguin Books) [cover]
  • Harvey Pekar/JT Waldman: Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (2012, Hill and Wang) [cover]
  • Ariella Azoulay/Adi Ophir: The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (2012, Stanford University Press) [cover]
  • Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland (2012, Verso) [cover]
  • Patrick Tyler: Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country -- and Why They Can't Make Peace (2012, Farrar Straus and Giroux) [cover]
  • Jonathan Schneer: The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2012, Random House) [cover]
  • Peter Beinart: The Crisis of Zionism (2012, Times Books) [cover]
  • Gershom Gorenberg: The Unmaking of Israel (2011, Harper) [cover]
  • Kai Bird: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (2010, Scribners) [cover]
  • Gilbert Achcar: The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010, Metropolitan Books) [cover]
  • Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People (2009, Verso) [cover]
  • Idith Zertal/Akiva Eldar: Lords of the Land: The War for Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007 (2007, Nation Books) [cover]
  • Tom Segev: The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000, Owl Books) [cover]
  • Idith Zertal: Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (2005, Cambridge University Press) [cover]
  • Rich Cohen: Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History (2009, Farrar Straus Giroux) [cover]
  • Zachary Karabell: Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation (2008, Vintage Books) [cover]
  • Jimmy Carter: We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009, Simon & Schuster) [cover]
  • Joel Kovel: Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (2007, Pluto Press) [cover]
  • Arno J Mayer: Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (2008, Verso) [cover]
  • Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007, Yale University Press) [cover]
  • Sandy Tolan: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (2007, paperback, Bloomsbury) [cover]
  • Tom Segev: 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (2007, Metropolitan) [cover]
  • Tanya Reinhart: The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (2006, Verso) [cover]
  • Robert Fisk: Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (1990; 2002 paperback, Nation Books) [cover]
  • Tanya Reinhart: Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (2002; 2005 paperback, Seven Stories Press) [cover]
  • Tom Segev: One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (2001, paperback, Picador)
  • Avi Shlaim: The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
  • Benny Morris: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999
  • Edward W Said: The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After
  • Robert D Kaplan: Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucusus
  • David Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
  • Tom Segev: The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust
  • Tom Segev: Elvis in Jerusalem: Post Zionism and the Americanization of Israel
  • Bernard Wasserstein: Israelis and Palestinians: Why Do They Fight? Can They Stop?
  • Richard Ben Cramer: How Israel Lost: The Four Questions (2004, Simon & Schuster)
  • Baruch Kimmerling: Politicide: The Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon: 2003, Verso
  • Yossi Beilin: The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Solution, 1996-2003 (2004, RDV Books) [cover]
  • Dennis Ross: The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (2004, Farrar Straus and Giroux) [cover]
  • Amos Oz: Israel, Palestine and Peace
  • Roane Carey/Jonathan Shanin, eds: The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent
  • Norman G Finkelstein: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict: 2003 (2nd ed, paperback, WW Norton)
  • Charles Enderlin: Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002
  • Stephen Zunes: Tinderbox
  • Bernard Wasserstein: Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City
  • Baruch Kimmerling/Joel S Migdal: The Palestinian People: A History
  • Norman Finkelstein: The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
  • Ian Black/Benny Morris: Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services
  • Michael Neumann: The Case Against Israel
  • Mazin Qumsiyeh: Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle

Total book count: 69