Impossible Takes Longer

November 1, 2022

The Guardian's Ireland correspondent, Carroll chronicles the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in October 1984 in There Will Be Fire. Published on Israel's 75th anniversary, two-time National Jewish Book Award winner Gordis's Impossible Takes Longer considers whether Israel's founders achieved their goal of creating a national homeland that would transform Jewish life (60,000-copy first printing). In 1742, a ship landed on Brazil's coast with 30 starving men feted as survivors of the wrecked British warship the Wager--until three months later, when three stragglers on another ship landing in Chile claimed the Wager's men were mutineers; from the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon). Chair of medieval history at King's College, London, Heather offers new reasons why Christendom grew from a tiny sect persecuted within foundering fourth-century CE Rome to the religion dominating Europe 1,000 years later. Celebrated Czech novelist Kundera, who has lived in France since 1975, argues that the "small nations" of Europe--e.g., Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine--are culturally rooted in Europe and under Soviet rule constituted A Kidnapped West (40,000-copy first printing). Following the LJ-starred The Crown in Crisis, which chronicled the Abdication Crisis of 1936, British historian Larman's The Windsors at War moves on to King George VI and the conflict within the Windsor family during World War II as the Duke of Windsor cozied up to Hitler (40,000-copy first printing). From leading South African political commentator Malala, The Plot To Save South Africa covers the 1993 assassination of Nelson Mandela's prot�g� Chris Hani by a white supremacist hoping to ignite a war, even as Mandela had begun power-sharing discussions with President FW de Klerk. Good-bye, Eastern Europe broadly documents the region briefly called Eastern Europe, moving from pre-Christian times through the great empires (Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian), the rise of communism and fascism, and the post-Soviet era to Russia's invasion of Ukraine; A Polish-born contributor to the Atlantic, has a PhD in Eastern European history from Berkeley (25,000-copy first printing). Granted special access by Queen Elizabeth II to her parents' letters and diaries and to the papers of close friends and family, Smith, the New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth the Queen, aims to show how a loving marriage helped George VI and Elizabeth lead a nation through war (50,000-copy first printing). From Simon, a former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs on the National Security Council, Grand Delusion tracks the four decades of oil-driven U.S. involvement in the Middle East, begun by the Reagan administration and moving through Desert Storm (which he challenges) to the Obama administration's step back. The acclaimed Winchester leaps nimbly from cuneiform writings through Gutenberg to Google and Wikipedia as he examines Knowing What We Know--that is, how we acquire, retain, and pass on information--and how technology's current capability to do those things for us might be threatening our ability to think (100,000-copy first printing).

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January 9, 2023
The history of Israel is “a combination of unexpected successes and maddening disappointments,” according to this even-handed chronicle. Comparing drafts of the 1948 Declaration of Israeli Independence, historian and journalist Gordis (We Stand Divided) notes that “there was a chorus of often conflicting voices that gave rise not only to the Declaration but to the country itself.” Once the state was created, tensions between aspirational goals and grim reality soon emerged, particularly over the doctrine of havlagah, or using force only for defensive purposes. Though Gordis defends Israel’s preemptive air strikes against Egypt in 1967, he casts a critical eye on the complicity of the Israeli Defense Forces in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut. Amid harrowing episodes of political and religious violence, Gordis highlights many remarkable achievements, including the staving off of economic collapse in the 1950s and Israel’s emergence as “a leader in agricultural technology, a formidable economic engine, and a technological powerhouse.” On balance, Gordis concludes the Jewish state has met its primary objectives, even if it has done so imperfectly. Though unlikely to change minds, this is an accessible overview of Israeli history and a well-reasoned case for why it’s worth supporting.

March 1, 2023
An examination of the complexities of Israel's past and future. On the 75th anniversary of the creation of Israel, Gordis, a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, offers a nuanced assessment of its successes and challenges. Israel's Zionist founders, he writes, "did not really agree about the fundamental justification for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Was it God? History? The Bible? Something else?" Yet they managed to forge a declaration that reflected their dream of creating a unique and exemplary nation, "different because it was a Jewish state, a nation that holds itself accountable to a different set of standards." They envisioned a society that would ensure "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex" and guarantee "freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture." Gordis considers a host of relevant issues, including Israeli democracy, treatment of minorities, the economy, secularism, religion, relationship to Diaspora Jews, and, not least, place on the international stage, underscoring Israel's determination to survive in a world in which antisemitism still rages. From the outset, it confronted violence by Palestine and volatility throughout the Middle East. Iran has repeatedly called for Israel's annihilation. Faced with these threats, Gordis asks, "If Israel can only survive by the sword, should the Jewish people give up the profound transformation in the Jews' existential condition that Israel has wrought?" The author acknowledges problems both within the nation (political corruption, internal violence, income inequality) and with its neighbors. "Israel," he writes, "can be fairly characterized as a success only if it and its people continue to be honest about who they have been, who they are, the terrible decisions that they have at times made, and who they and their country still need to become." Yet in light of its founders' dreams, he sees the nation as "one of the greatest stories of resilience, of rebirth, and of triumph in human history." A thoughtful, well-informed analysis.

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