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It’s vacation season again -- so we at TIP thought we’d provide a list of great books for the beach, the mountains or just those long quiet evenings lounging in your hammock.
The list is a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Some of the books are quite serious and demanding, others are lighter. But they are all interesting and worthwhile. Enjoy!
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To the End of the Land by David Grossman
This magnificent novel, if there is any justice in the world, should earn David Grossman a Nobel Prize for Literature. The three central characters are Ora and her two lovers, Avram and Ilan. The book begins during their feverish meeting as teenagers during the 1967 war but mostly it takes place in 1973 and in the present. This book is full of human compassion. It describes a depth of love and longing that is almost palpable – it captures the Israeli dilemma.
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The Prime Ministers by Yehuda Avner
The Prime Ministers is the first and only insider account of Israeli politics from the founding of the Jewish State to the near-present day. It reveals stunning details of life-and-death decision-making, top-secret military operations and high level peace negotiations. It brings readers into the orbits of world figures, including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It provides unforgettable descriptions of political rivalries, diplomatic blunders, White House and Buckingham Palace banquets and more.
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The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev
Passionate, ribald and tender, bursting with dozens of interwoven tales, this lushly nostalgic novel (a bestseller in Israel) records the loves, hates, infidelities, feuds and enterprises that fuel one community over three decades. It also gently laments the eclipse of the pioneer spirit in modern Israel. Orphaned at age two when a bomb thrown by Arab terrorists kills his sleeping parents, Baruch Shenkar is raised by his grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant and founding father of a cooperative village in Palestine. Shalev's colorful, feisty characters and vibrant prose animate this indelible depiction of the birth of a nation.
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Coming Together, Coming Apart by Daniel Gordis
"Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story - of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a Jihadist war." —Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic.
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Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon has been hailed as the most compelling creation since “Ian Fleming put down his martini and invented James Bond” (Rocky Mountain News). A man with a deep appreciation for all that is beautiful, Gabriel is also an angel of vengeance, an international operative who will stop at nothing to see justice done. Sometimes he must journey far in search of evil. And sometimes evil comes to him. For Gabriel and his wife, Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this autumn day. And while walking toward Covent Garden, Gabriel notices a man he believes is about to carry out a third attack. Before Gabriel can draw his weapon, he is knocked to the pavement and can only watch as the nightmare unfolds...
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Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren
Israel’s ambassador in Washington is author of the most complete history to date of the Six Day War of 1967. While no account can be definitive until Arab archives open, Oren utilizes newly available archival sources and a spectrum of interviews with participants, including many Arabs, to fill gaps and correct misconceptions. Oren convincingly establishes in an often engrossing narrative the reactive, contingent nature of Israeli policy during both the crisis preceding the conflict and the war itself.
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The Nazi Hunter by Alan Elsner
TIP’s own communications director supplies this thriller. “At the start of this gripping debut thriller set in 1994, a German-accented woman named Sophie Reiner appears at the desk of Marek Cain, a Nazi hunter in the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, and tells Marek that she can deliver smoking gun documents concerning Belzec, an extermination camp in Poland where half a million Jews were murdered in 1942. Marek is extremely interested, both professionally and personally: his own grandparents perished at Belzec. The next day, Sophie turns up dead in her hotel room, where the police find a CD of Argentinean baritone Roberto Delatrucha singing Schubert lieder. The possible Argentinean connection sets off alarms for the veteran investigator, and soon he's hot on the trail of the famous singer. Subplots involving neo-Nazis out to blow up Washington, and the newly elected Republican congress threatening to cut off OSI funding add suspense, but it's Marek's quest to expose Delatrucha's past that drives this compelling tale.” (Publishers Weekly)
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