Starting with their roots in the Australian pub circuit, this book takes a thorough look at where the band came from, where they've been, and where they're going. Bon Scott and the Young brothers' earlier bands are discussed, as well as the trio's first collaboration, supplemented by rare photographs and interviews with more than 50 of the band's friends and colleagues. Previously unpublished details on Bon Scott's untimely death in 1980 and the strange circumstances around it are revealed, along with information on AC/DC's upcoming album, their first in five years.

    "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory."This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem.

    The controversy was never merely academic. The legal status and security of Jews—often their very lives—depended on the answer. In WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS, David Klinghoffer reveals that the Jews since ancient times accepted not only the historical existence of Jesus but the role of certain Jews in bringing about his crucifixion and death. But he also argues that they had every reason to be skeptical of claims for his divinity. For one thing, Palestine under Roman occupation had numerous charismatic would-be messiahs, so Jesus would not have been unique, nor was his following the largest of its kind. For another, the biblical prophecies about the coming of the Messiah were never fulfilled by Jesus, including an ingathering of exiles, the rise of a Davidic king who would defeat Israel’s enemies, the building of a new Temple, and recognition of God by the gentiles. Above all, the Jews understood their biblically commanded way of life, from which Jesus’s followers sought to “free” them, as precious, immutable, and eternal.Jews have long been blamed for Jesus’s death and stigmatized for rejecting him. But Jesus lived and died a relatively obscure figure at the margins of Jewish society. Indeed, it is difficult to argue that “the Jews” of his day rejected Jesus at all, since most Jews had never heard of him. The figure they really rejected, often violently, was Paul, who convinced the Jerusalem church led by Jesus’s brother to jettison the observance of Jewish law. Paul thus founded a new religion. If not for him, Christianity would likely have remained a Jewish movement, and the course of history itself would have been changed. Had the Jews accepted Jesus, Klinghoffer speculates, Christianity would not have conquered Europe, and there would be no Western civilization as we know it. WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS tells the story of this long, acrimonious, and occasionally deadly debate between Christians and Jews. It is thoroughly engaging, lucidly written, and in many ways highly original. Though written from a Jewish point of view, it is also profoundly respectful of Christian sensibilities. Coming at a time when Christians and Jews are in some ways moving closer than ever before, this thoughtful and provocative book represents a genuine effort to heal the ancient rift between these two great faith traditions.

    In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal power outside the region since the end of World War II and as such must account for its repeated failed diplomacy efforts to resolve this enduring strife.The fatal flaw in American policy, Judis shows, can be traced back to the Truman years. What happened between 1945 and 1949 sealed the fate of the Middle East for the remainder of the century. As a result, understanding that period holds the key to explaining almost everything that follows—right down to George W. Bush's unsuccessful and ill-conceived effort to win peace through holding elections among the Palestinians, and Barack Obama's failed attempt to bring both parties to the negotiating table. A provocative narrative history animated by a strong analytical and moral perspective, and peopled by colorful and outsized personalities and politics, Genesis offers a fresh look at these critical postwar years, arguing that if we can understand how this stalemate originated, we will be better positioned to help end it.

    One of his prisoners was Rafiq, a rising leader in the PLO. Overcoming their fears and prejudices, the two men began a dialogue that, over more than a decade, grew into a remarkable friendship. Now an award-winning journalist, Goldberg describes their relationship and their confrontations over religious, cultural, and political differences; through these discussions, he attempts to make sense of the conflicts in this embattled region, revealing the truths that lie buried within the animosities of the Middle East.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Informing his examination using interviews in Israel and the West Bank and with access to previously classified Israeli documents, Gorenberg delivers an incisive discussion of the causes and trends of extremism in Israel’s government and society. Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, writes, "until I read The Unmaking of Israel, I didn't think it could be possible to feel more despairing, and then more terribly hopeful, about Israel, a place that I began at last, under the spell of Gershom Gorenberg's lucid and dispassionate yet intensely personal writing, to understand."

    In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream--the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals--may die.In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the center of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first "Jewish president," a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions not just of American and Israeli national interests but of the mission of the Jewish people itself.Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

    The Yellow Wind is essential reading for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Israel today.

    In this groundbreaking and controversial book he examines ten of the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. Once and for all he explodes the myths that justify the rights of the Israeli state, asking, - Was Palestine an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration? - Were the Jews a people without a land? - Is there no difference between Zionism and Judaism? - Is Zionism not a colonial project of occupation? - Did the Palestinians leave their homeland voluntarily in 1948? - Was the June 1967 War a war of -no choice-? - Is Israel the only democracy in the Middle East? - Were the failed Oslo negotiations of 1992 the PLO's fault? - Was it a question of national security to bomb Gaza? - Is the Two States Solution still achievable? Written for the general reader, this book will prompt a huge, and necessary, debate.

    He seized the opportunity to do something "noble." Using an electric saw, Harvey sliced through the skull and gingerly removed the organ that would both define and haunt the rest of his life. Harvey struck a controversial deal with Einstein's family to keep the brain, swearing to safeguard it from souvenir hunters and publicity seekers, and to make it available only for serious scientific inquiry. Not a neuroscientist himself, he became the unlikely custodian of this object of intense curiosity and speculation, and the self-styled bulwark against the relentless power of Einstein's growing celebrity. Bridging the post-war era and the new millennium, Possessing Genius is the first comprehensive account of the circuitous path the brain took with Harvey during the decades it remained in his possession. Harvey permitted Einstein's gray matter to be sliced, diced, probed, prodded, and weighed by those hoping to solve the enigma and locate the source of genius itself. The brain was more than a subject of scientific investigation, it was a kind of holy relic; the history of its adventures since 1955 reflects the vicissitudes and vanities underpinning what we believe makes us human. Abraham has gathered together all of the fascinating details and documents of the brain's saga--including previously unpublished correspondence between Harvey and Otto Nathan, the executor of Einstein's estate—and from them woven a story that is both deeply engrossing and highly illuminating.

    It is told by a writer who has spent his career explaining the world to Israelis and interpreting Israel for a global readership.Benjamin Netanyahu was born a year after Israel. His story in many ways embodies that of the ideological underdogs of the Zionist enterprise: members of the right-wing Revisionist movement, the religious, the Mizrahi Jews who emigrated from Arab lands, the petit-bourgeoisie of the new towns and cities, who all were supposed to metamorphose into the new Israeli. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Netanyahu is also a child of America. He is in large part the product of the affluent East Coast Jewish community and of the generation that came of age in the Reagan era. He was formed as much by American Cold War conservatism as he was by his historian father's hardline right-wing Zionism. It is impossible to understand today's Israel without understanding this singular person's life. Netanyahu's Israel is a hybrid of ancient phobia and high-tech hope, tribalism and globalism--like the man himself. In the face of animus at home and abroad, Netanyahu has survived political defeat and personal setback. For many in Israel and overseas, Netanyahu is an anathema, an embarrassment, even a precursor of Donald Trump. But he continues to dominate Israeli public life and the Jewish narrative of the twenty-first century. As Israel approaches the seventieth anniversary of its birth, this one man more than any other embodies the nation and directs its fate.

    The phone rings. A grandfather he never knew is dying. He rushes to the old man's bedside and finds himself promising to find the Ark of the Covenant, missing for over 2,500 years. In Israel Alex picks up a partner in his quest—archeologist Rivka Golan. Within days they are targeted by a sniper, chased through the streets of Jersualem by a bulldozer, interrogated by Israeli intelligence, and trapped in a tunnel under the world's most sacred site—the Temple Mount.

    It is the most troubled region on earth. At its heart is the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis - and the legacy of six days of war in 1967.After the state of Israel emerged from war in 1948, both sides knew more battles were coming. In June 1967, years of slow-burning tension exploded. In six extraordinary days, Israel destroyed the armed forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. But far from bringing peace, as many Israelis hoped, their stunning victory turned into a curse.From the initial battle order issued to the Israeli air force on Monday June 5, 1967 to the final ceasefire on the evening of Saturday the 10th, the Six-Day War was a riveting human drama. Building on his first-hand experience of the region after his five years as the BBC's Middle East Correspondent, as well as extensive original research, Jeremy Bowen presents a compelling new history of the conflict. Six Days recreates day by day, hour by hour, the bullying and brinckmanship that led four nations to war, interweaving testimonies of combatants from all sides in a seamless narrative.A rigorous and original piece of modern history is as vivid as fiction, Six Days not only sheds new light on one of the key conflicts of the twentieth century, it explains much about the Middle East and the problems the region still faces today.

    Tuchman, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August, comes history thru a wide-angle lens: a fascinating chronicle of Britain’s long relationship with Palestine & the Middle East, from the ancient world to the 20th century. Historically, the British were drawn to the Holy Land for two major reasons: first, to translate the Bible into English &, later, to control the road to India & access to Middle Eastern oil. With the lucid vividness that characterize all her work, Tuchman follows these twin spiritual & imperial motives—the Bible & the sword—to their seemingly inevitable endpoint, when Britain conquered Palestine at the conclusion of WWI. At that moment, in a gesture of significance & solemnity, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 established a British-sponsored mandate for a national home for the Jewish people. Throughout this account, Tuchman demonstrates that the seeds of conflict were planted in the Middle East long before the official founding of the modern state of Israel. “Tuchman is a wise & witty writer, a shrewd observer with a lively command of high drama.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “In her métier as a narrative popular historical writer, Barbara Tuchman is supreme.”—Chicago Sun-Times

     Relying on recent disclosures about what instigated the greatest Mideast war, “The Jerusalem Inception” tells the story of courageous yet imperfect men and women engaged in a race against a national calamity. It starts in Neturay Karta, a fiercely anti-Zionist Orthodox sect in Jerusalem, and continues through the corridors of power and the annals of covert operations as the Jewish state is caught in a titan match between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Faced with the most dangerous moment in Israel’s short history, the agents of the Mossad and its sister spy agencies will stop at nothing to prevent a second Holocaust. “The dramatic outcome of the 1967 war continues to dominate the Middle East. If you want to know what really happened (and at the same time fall in love with a striking cast of unforgettable characters) then ‘The Jerusalem Inception’ is for you. In the best tradition of ‘Eye of the Needle’ and ‘The Bourne Identity,’ this one is a hit!” —Stephen J. Wall, author of ‘The Morning After’ and ‘On the Fly.’