Holy Land reading list

RECOMMENDED READING

The Bible

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land.  An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700. 5^th ed.  (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Suad Amairy - Sharon and My Mother-in-law: Ramallah Diaries (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005)

Hanan Ashrawi, This Side of Peace: A Personal Account (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995)

Sari Nusseibeh, Once Upon A Country: A Palestinian Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).

Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013).

Raja Shehadeh - Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape (New York: Scribner, 2008)

Avi Shlaim - The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)

Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006).

Lawrence Wright, Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Translations of the Quran:

The Koran Interpreted  by A. J. Arberry 

Readings in the Quran by Kenneth Cragg

Religion:

Arthur Green, Judaism’s Ten Best Ideas: A Brief Guide for Seekers (Woodstock VT: Jewish Lights, 2014)

Memoir:

Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness (London: Vintage, 2005).

Donald Nicholl, The Testing of Hearts: A Pilgrim’s Journal (London: Lamp Press, 1989).

Fiction:

Laurie R. King, O Jerusalem (New York: Bantam, 1999)

History:

Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).

Martin Van Creveld, The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel (New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press, 2010).

Historical perspectives

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson 

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin 

Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence

Josephus, The Jewish War (Penguin)

The radioman's prayer

Lord of the Universe

Please, increase your transmission strength

here I

can’t hear, don’t know

if once again you’ve stuck a metal flower in the antenna’s lapel.

You’re so gentle. Why

are you so soft, why are you always

civilian

Can you hear me clearly, over.

Roger, you too sound cut off, you

sound amputated, you

Are in a valley, deployed three-sixty. Hills

and a different Sea of Galilee. Please

apprise me of your transmission strength, with radar

we can’t see your face, why

are you not on treads, why

are you not fighting, should we

send you a mechanized patrol, I

am full of faith

that it won’t arrive and won’t come back...

The radioman’s prayer by Be'eri Hazak, Israeli reservist who died along the Suez Canal in 1973. From Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story, by Matti Friedman (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2016)  p. 130-131, a memoir and investigative study of the Lebanon security zone held by Israel until 2000.