To read Mr. Lewis, wrote Fouad Ajami in The Wall Street Journal, is to be taken through a treacherous terrain by the coolest and most reassuring of guides. Youare in the hands of the Islamic world's foremost living historian. Now this sure-handed guide takes us through treacherous terrain indeed--the events of 1492, a year laden with epic events and riven by political debate.With elegance and erudition, Lewis explores that climactic year as a clash of civilizations--a clash not only of the New World and the Old, but also of Christendom and Islam, of Europe and the rest. In the same year that Columbus set sail across the Atlantic, he reminds us, the Spanish monarchycaptured Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the peninsula, and also expelled the Jews. Lewis uses these three epochal events to explore the nature of the European-Islamic conflict, placing the voyages of discovery in a striking new context. He traces Christian Europe's path from being aprimitive backwater on the edges of the vast, cosmopolitan Caliphate, through the heightening rivalry of the two religions, to the triumph of the West over Islam, examining the factors behind their changing fortunes and cultural qualities.Balanced and insightful, this far-reaching discussion of the encounters between Islam, the West, and the globe provides a new understanding of the distant events that gave shape to the modern world.

    Representing twenty years of research and reflection, Leni Yahil's book won the Shazar Prize, one of Israel's highest awards for historical work. Now available in English, The Holocaust offers a sweeping look at the Final Solution, covering not only Nazi policies, but also how Jews and foreign governments perceived and responded to the unfolding nightmare. The Holocaust is astonishingly comprehensive. Yahil weaves a gripping chronological narrative that stretches from the Norwegian fjords to the Greek islands, from Amsterdam to Tehran--and even Shanghai. Her writing is balanced, objective, and compelling, as she systematically explores the evolution of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe, probing its politics, planning, goals, and key figures. Yahil uses her command of the many relevant languages to marshal an impressive array of documentary and statistical evidence, driving her narrative forward with telling details and personal accounts--such as a survivor's description of her perseverance during a death march, or the story of the Struma, a boat that sank with over 700 Jewish refugees when the British refused to receive it in Palestine. Along the way, she destroys persistent myths about the Holocaust: that Hitler had no plan for exterminating the Jews, that the Jews themselves went peacefully to the slaughter. Though Yahil finds that Nazi policies were often inconsistent, particularly during the years before the war, she conclusively demonstrates that Hitler was always working toward a final reckoning with world Jewry, envisioning his war as a war against the Jews. The book also recounts numerous uprisings and acts of resistance in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as the activities of Jewish partisan units. Yahil describes the work of Jews in America, Palestine, and world organizations on behalf of Hitler's victims--often in the face of resistance by the Allied governments and neutral states--and explores the factors that affected the success of rescue efforts. The Holocaust is a monumental work of history, unsurpassed in scope and insightful detail. Objective yet compassionate, Leni Yahil brings together the countless diverse strands of this epic event in a single gripping account.

    Known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, this thirty-five-acre enclosure at the southeast corner of Jerusalem's Old City is the most contested piece of real estate on earth. Here nationalism combines with fundamentalist faith in a volatile brew. Members of the world's three major monotheistic faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--hold this spot to be the key to salvation as they await the end of the world, and struggle to fulfill conflicting religious prophecies with dangerous political consequences. Adroitly portraying American radio evangelists of the End, radical Palestinian sheikhs, and Israeli ex-terrorists, Gorenberg explains why believers hope for the End, and why prominent American fundamentalists provide hard-line support for Israel while looking forward to the apocalypse. He makes sense of the messianic fervor that has driven some Israeli settlers to oppose peace. And he describes the Islamic apocalyptic visions that cast Israel's actions in Jerusalem as diabolic plots. The End of Days shows how conflict over Jerusalem and the fiery belief in apocalypse continue to have a potent impact on world politics and why a lasting peace in the Middle East continues to prove elusive.

    Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.In a devastating new postscript to this best-selling book, Norman G. Finkelstein documents the Holocaust industry's scandalous cover-up of the blackmail of Swiss banks, and in a new appendix demolishes an influential apologia for the Holocaust industry.

    It was the unlikely start to what would prove a remarkable, continent-hopping, century-crossing saga, and one that in many ways has revolutionized our sense of what it means to lead a Jewish life. In Sacred Trash, MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and acclaimed essayist Adina Hoffman tell the story of the retrieval from an Egyptian geniza, or repository for worn-out texts, of the most vital cache of Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. This tale of buried scholarly treasure weaves together unforgettable portraits of Solomon Schechter and the other heroes of this drama with explorations of the medieval documents themselves—letters and poems, wills and marriage contracts, Bibles, money orders, fiery dissenting tracts, fashion-conscious trousseaux lists, prescriptions, petitions, and mysterious magical charms. Presenting a panoramic view of nine hundred years of vibrant Mediterranean Judaism, Hoffman and Cole bring modern readers into the heart of this little-known trove, whose contents have rightly been dubbed “the Living Sea Scrolls.” Part biography and part meditation on the supreme value the Jewish people has long placed on the written word, Sacred Trash is above all a gripping tale of adventure and redemption.

    This is apparent in the many attempts to purge colour from art, literature and architecture, either by making it the property of some "foreign" body - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile the vulgar or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the inessential or the cosmetic, which in many cases amounts to the same thing. In Chromophobia, David Batchelor analyzes the history of, and motivations behind, chromophobia, from its beginnings through examples of nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century architecture and film, to Pop art, minimalism and the art and architecture of the present day. Batchelor suggests how colour fits, or fails to fit, into the cultural imagination of the West, exploring such diverse themes as Melville's "great white whale," Le Corbusier's "journey to the East," Huxley's experiments with mescaline. Dorothy's travels in the Land of Oz and the implication of modern artists' experiments with industrial paints and materials.

    Prevailing classifications have sometimes assigned Jews to the white race and at other times have created an off-white racial designation for them. Those changes in racial assignment have shaped the ways American Jews of different eras have constructed their ethnoracial identities. Brodkin illustrates these changes through an analysis of her own family's multi-generational experience. She shows how Jews, in her opinion, experience a kind of double vision that comes from racial middleness: on the one hand, marginality with regard to whiteness; on the other, whiteness and belonging with regard to blackness.

    With its dense history of endless conflict and biblical events, Israel's coastline is by far the most interesting hundred miles in the world. As longtime chief of NBC's Tel Aviv news bureau, Martin Fletcher is in a unique position to interpret Israel, and he brings it off in a spectacular and novel manner. Last year he strolled along the entire coast, from Lebanon to Gaza, observing facets of the country that are ignored in news reports, yet tell a different and truer story. "Walking Israel "is packed with hilarious moments, historical insights, emotional, true-life tales, and, above all, great storytelling.

    citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates. Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status. The NYPD, with help from the CIA, has aggressively spied on Muslims in the New York area as they go about their ordinary lives, from noting where they get their hair cut to eavesdropping on conversations in cafés. In This Muslim American Life, Moustafa Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you. In gripping essays, Bayoumi exposes how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present.-from http://nyupress.org/books/9781479835645/

    Reading across archives, canons, and continents, Lowe connects the liberal narrative of freedom overcoming slavery to the expansion of Anglo-American empire, observing that abstract promises of freedom often obscure their embeddedness within colonial conditions. Race and social difference, Lowe contends, are enduring remainders of colonial processes through which “the human” is universalized and “freed” by liberal forms, while the peoples who create the conditions of possibility for that freedom are assimilated or forgotten. Analyzing the archive of liberalism alongside the colonial state archives from which it has been separated, Lowe offers new methods for interpreting the past, examining events well documented in archives, and those matters absent, whether actively suppressed or merely deemed insignificant. Lowe invents a mode of reading intimately, which defies accepted national boundaries and disrupts given chronologies, complicating our conceptions of history, politics, economics, and culture, and ultimately, knowledge itself.

    How and why did this quintessential American folk-hero and pioneering industrialist become one of the most obsessive anti-Semites of our time-a man who devoted his immense financial resources to publishing a pernicious forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? Once Henry Ford's virulent media campaign against the Jews took off during the "anxious decade" following World War I, how did America's splintered Jewish community attempt to cope with the relentless tirade conducted for ninety-one consecutive weeks in the automobile manufacturer's personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent? What were the repercussions of Ford's Jew-hatred extending deeply into the 1930s? Drawing upon previously-uncited oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and family memoirs, Neil Baldwin answers these and other questions, examining the conservative biases of the men at the inner circle of the Ford Motor Company and disentangling painful ideological struggles among an elite Jewish leadership reluctantly pitted against the clout and popularity of "The Flivver King."

    Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Through revealing stories of significant events and of ordinary individuals—pioneers, immigrants, entrepreneurs, scientists, army generals, peaceniks, settlers, and Palestinians—Israeli journalist Ari Shavit illuminates many of the pivotal moments of the Zionist century that led Israel to where it is today. We meet the youth group leader who recognized the potential of Masada as a powerful symbol for Zionism; the young farmer who bought an orange grove from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s, and with the Jaffa orange helped to create a booming economy in Palestine; the engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program; the religious Zionists who started the settler movement. Over an illustrious career that has spanned almost thirty years, Shavit has had rare access to people from across the Israeli political, economic, and social spectrum, and in this ambitious work he tells a riveting story that is both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.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? And can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, both internal and external, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result 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.

    Its survival has been an incredible journey, especially considering how often Jews have tried to kill it themselves. Underlying Neal Karlen's unique, brashly entertaining, yet thoroughly researched telling of the language's story is the notion that Yiddish is a mirror of Jewish history, thought, and practice—for better and worse.Karlen charts the beginning of Yiddish as a minor dialect in medieval Europe that helped peasant Jews live safely apart from the marauders of the First Crusades. Incorporating a large measure of antique German dialects, Yiddish also included little scraps of French, Italian, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, the Slavic and Romance languages, and a dozen other tongues native to the places where Jews were briefly given shelter. One may speak a dozen languages, all of them Yiddish.By 1939, Yiddish flourished as the lingua franca of 13 million Jews. After the Holocaust, whatever remained of Yiddish, its worldview and vibrant culture, was almost stamped out—by Jews themselves. Yiddish was an old-world embarrassment for Americans anxious to assimilate. In Israel, young, proud Zionists suppressed Yiddish as the symbol of the weak and frightened ghetto-bound Jew—and invented modern Hebrew.Today, a new generation has zealously sought to explore the language and to embrace its soul. This renaissance has spread to millions of non-Jews who now know the subtle difference between a shlemiel and a shlimazel; hundreds of Yiddish words dot the most recent editions of the Oxford English Dictionary.The Story of Yiddish is a delightful tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.

    Written by one of the world's foremost political economists, this original and provocative essay takes on one of the great "ideological deformations" of our time: Eurocentrism. Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addressesa broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and shortcomingsof contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. This second edition contains a new introduction and concluding chapter, both of which make the author's arguments even more compelling.

    In the years that followed, she was terrified to explore the ancient city she so loved. But, sick of living in fear, she has now chosen to live within the Old City's walls, living in each of the four quarters: Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish. Jerusalem’s Old City is the hottest piece of spiritual real estate in the world. For millennia empires have clashed and crumbled over this place. Today, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians plays out daily in her streets, and the ancient stones run with blood. But it’s also an ordinary city, where people buy vegetables, and sooth colicky babies, where pipes break, where the pious get high, and young couples sneak away to kiss in the shadows. Sarah has thrown herself into the maelstrom of living in each quarter—where time is measured in Sabbath sunsets and morning bells and calls to prayer, in stabbing attacks and check points—keeping the holidays in each quarter, buying bread from the same bread seller, making friends with people who were once her enemies, and learning some of the secrets and sharing the stories that make Jerusalem so special, and so exquisitely ordinary. Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered is a book for anyone who’s wondered who really lives in Israel, and how they coexist. It’s a book that skillfully weaves the personal and political, the heartwarming and the heart-stopping. It’s a book that only Sarah Tuttle-Singer can write. The Old City of Jerusalem may be set in stone, but it’s always changing—and these pages capture that.