Israel

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 194 pages. The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Haim Watzman, an Israeli journalist. In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface--an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seek to build Gardens of Eden on earth--a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography's instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee.

Softcover. Lanham, University Press of America, 1st, 1983, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR ON FRONT ENDPAPER. Light foxing to edges and covers. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen and joins a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Verso Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 425 pages. The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who believed that 'the whole nation is the army'. In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was the instrument that might transform a diverse population into a new people. Since the foundation of Israel, therefore, the IDF has been the largest, richest and most influential institution in Israel's Jewish society and is the nursery of its social, economic and political ruling class. In this fascinating history, Bresheeth charts the evolution of the IDF from the Nakba to wars in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the continued assaults upon Gaza, and shows that the state of Israel has been formed out of its wars. He also gives an account of his own experiences as a young conscript during the 1967 war. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 350 pages. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. Gilt title on spine and design on front cover board. B/w illustrations throughout. Front flaps very lightly yellowed at top, otherwise clean inside and out. previous bookseller tag on back. From the dust jacket front flap: "As we follow Peres from his ancestral home in Poland to Israel, from the youth village of BenShemon to Kibbutz Alumot, from the youth movement leader to prime minister, we are introduced both to a man and to a nation."

Hardcover. Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 328 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Previous owner's name on front flyleaf. Black cover boards, gilt title on spine. Binding tight. Spine straight. Pages clean, unmarked, bright. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent, glossy. Assesses the comexity and fluidity of Christian identity from the reign of Elizabeth I and the early Stuart kings through the English Revolution, and into the Restoration, which the English Church and monarchy were restored.

Softcover. NY, Thomas Dunne Books, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 460 pages. Draws from classified documents, confidential sources, and closed-door interviews with Mossad agents, informants, and spymasters to reveal the organization's deepest secrets. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1st UK, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawing extensively on his diaries as well as his published works, this intellectual biographical follows Herzl's transformation from a private person into the founder and leader of a political movement which made the quest for a Jewish state into a player in international politics. Contrary to the conventional view which saw the Dreyfus affair as the trigger for Herzl's loss of belief in the promise of Jewish emancipation, Avineri shows how it was the political crisis of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire, torn apart by contending national movements, which convinced Herzl of the need for a Jewish polity. In response to the wide resonance for his 1896 The Jewish State, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, which established the World Zionist Organization with its representative and elected institutions; this in turn became the foundation for Israel's democratic political system. In his efforts to gain international support for a Jewish state, Herzl met with the Ottoman Sultan, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, Pope Pius X, British, Russian and German ministers, as well as an enormous number of other government and public opinion leaders of most European countries. By the time of his early death in 1904 at the age of 44, Herzl succeeded in putting Zionism on the map of world politics, no longer an esoteric idea held by a small group of Jewish intellectuals in Eastern Europe. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 350 pages. Describes Israel's use of spies in Lebanon during the seventies, the secret relations between Israel and Jordan, and U.S. secret channels to the PLO. Posner focuses on violence and terrorism employed by the Palestinians in their quest for nationhood, and on inter-communal violence in the Middle East in general and more specifically in Lebanon. He treats the little-known Circassion community in Jordan, that community's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Sadat peace initiative, and the role of the United States in seeking a peaceful resolution of the civil war in Lebanon. A good book to gain a perspective on contemporary diplomacy and Middle East politics. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, England, Oxford University Press, Reprint, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 788 pages. Hardcover. Vol. III & IV only. Previous owner's name stamped on contents page and front endpapers. Green cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine, spine very faded (see image). Pages and edges have a touch of tanning. Edges have a specked design. v. 3. Holiness and its upholders -- v. 4. The renewal and the source of holiness. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Israel, Yeshivat Kol Yehuda, Reprint, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 264 pages. Hardcover. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with light wear along edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. London, Macmillian St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 553 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Dust jacket spine has St. Martin's Press sticker on bottom. Internally, clean and tight. Cover boards have light soil to front and fading to bottom edge.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 288 pages, map illustration. Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-277) and index. Subjects: To 1917; Jewish-Arab relations History To 1917; Jews Colonization Palestine; Labor Zionism Palestine; Land settlement Palestine; Palestine Social conditions; Palestine History 1799-1917. Name, date on front fly leaf otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Ontario CA, Vanwell Publishing St. Catherines, Ontario, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 344 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Quadrangle Books/New York Times, 2nd pr., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, rubbed dust jacket. Translated by Ruth Geyra Stern and Sol Stern. The events preceding the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. NY, Public Affairs, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 422 pages, b&w illustrations. Combining razor-sharp analysis with dramatic narrative, vivid portraits of soldiers and commanders with illuminating discussions of battle tactics and covert actions, The Sword and the Olive traces the history of the IDF from its beginnings in Palestine to today. The book also goes beyond chronology to wrestle with the political and ethical struggles that have shaped the IDF and the country it serves--struggles that are manifesting themselves in the recent tragic escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Often revisionist in attitude, surprising in many of its conclusions, this book casts new light on the struggle for peace in the Middle East. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Dial Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket, 360 pages with index. The author deals in detail with two periods when he feels there was a chance for peace -the six years following the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the aftermath of the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of 1967.