Sixty years after fighting in Israel's War of Independence, Yoram Kaniuk tries to remember what exactly did—and did not—happen in his time as a teenage soldier in the Palmach. The result is a touchingly poignant and hauntingly beautiful memoir that the author himself considers a work of fiction, for what is memory but one's own story about the past?Eschewing self-righteousness in favor of self-criticism, Kaniuk's book, winner of the 2010 Sapir Prize for Literature, is the tale of a...

Diplomat and raconteur Zalman Shoval leads readers behind the closed doors of Jerusalem and Washington in this memoir, into the rooms where prime ministers and presidents made decisions about the first Gulf War, the fate of Jonathan Pollard, the role of the PLO, and Israel’s responses to international criticism and hostilities.As a member of Israel’s Likud party, an early ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a two-time ambassador to the United States, Shoval has navigated...

Based on previously unexploited primary sources, this is the first comprehensive biography of Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the pioneers of Modern Hebrew literature. Born in 1881 to a poor Jewish family in Russia, Brenner published his first story, "A Loaf of Bread," in 1900. After being drafted into the Russian army, he deserted to England and later immigrated to Palestine where he became an eminent writer, critic and cultural icon of the Jewish and Zionist cultural milieu. His life was trag...

A whirlwind of art, music, and lust, Life on Sandpaper is Yoram Kaniuk's overwhelming autobiographical novel detailing his years as a young painter in the New York of the '50s. Wounded and alienated, a war veteran at the age of nineteen, Kaniuk arrives in Greenwich Village at its peak period of artistic creativity, and finds his way among such giants as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Willem de Kooning, and Frank Sinatra. In terse prose, inspired by the associative and breathless ...

'I read this book in excitement and wonder. It's not only a touching and fascinating book, but a sophisticated one as well.' Amos OzLinda Yechiel's English translation is the winner of the 2023 Society of Authors' TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew TranslationYoel has always known that his mother escaped the Nazis from Amsterdam. But it is not until after she has died that he finally visits the city of his birth. There, watching an old f...

Written by one of Israel's most notable scholars, this volume provides a breathtaking history of Israel from the origins of the Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century to the present day. Organized chronologically, the volume explores the emergence of Zionism in Europe against the backdrop of relations among Jews, Arabs, and Turks, and the earliest pioneer settlements in Palestine under Ottoman rule. Weaving together political, social, and cultural developments in Palestine under t...

Now a Netflix Series, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is a dazzling story about mothers and daughters, secrets and betrayals, and a binding curse.The #1 International BestsellerGabriela's mother Luna is the most beautiful woman in all of Jerusalem, though her famed beauty and charm seem to be reserved for everyone but her daughter. Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have struggled to connect. But when tragedy strikes, Gab...

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender rum...

How the original ELIZA chatbot transformed ideas about AI and society’s response to them.As we reach the 60th anniversary of ELIZA’s public debut, Inventing ELIZA offers the first comprehensive critical analysis of Joseph Weizenbaum’s groundbreaking chatbot system through the lens of critical code studies. Drawing on extensive archival research at MIT, Stanford, and UCLA, this book presents the rediscovered original source code of ELIZA alongside previousl...

Long considered ground zero for global climate change in the United States, Florida presents the perfect case study for disaster risk and prevention. Building on the idea that disasters are produced by historical and contemporary social processes as well as natural phenomena, Amanda D. Concha-Holmes and Anthony Oliver-Smith present a collection of ethnographic case studies that examine the social and environmental effects of Florida’s public and private sector development policies. Contrib...

In Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion―what she found intriguing and useful―and how she came to confront its darker sides.As a young woman from a literary family striving to forge h...