From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring. We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

History

Ehrenreich, Ben

Middle East

Penguin??Books

This audacious reimagining of The Odyssey finds Penny home alone while Payne, a modern-day Odysseus, gallivants around the world on battleships and attack helicopters, waging wars of conquest. A drinking, drugging crew of ne’er-do-well squatters surrounds Penny, eager for her attention. Even their most eyebrow-raising exploits can’t distract her, though, as she angrily pines for Payne. But when a mysterious man with suspicious origins arrives on the scene, the suitors’ precarious pecking order falls to pieces in the glow of Penny’s newly ignited ardor. Brutal, playful, sexy, and subversive, The Suitors is a classic of its own kind.

The Suitors: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Mariner Books

From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring. We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away. From the Hardcover edition.

Penguin Audio

A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as The Stranger wanders an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to "get back on top." Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alikeeven by the author of this novel, whom he visits repeatedly in unsuccessful attempts to determine his own narrativehis impotence and rage are expressed in acts of seemingly senseless violence. The various characters he encounters on his journeya pack of sadistic boys, skinheads who beat him senseless, a deaf-mute woman who tries to heal him, a sidewalk preacher, and a deranged man who identifies him as The Oneavoid or abuse him, or attempt to follow him.Entertaining, disturbing, and wildly intelligent, written with sinister humor and great compassion, Ether reflects on the possibilities and consequences of forgiveness, the problems of faith, and the trials of creation."Like a David Lynch movie transcribed by Pierre Reverdy, it's a brilliant and unforgettable book, written somewhere between sleeping and waking." — Chris Kraus, author of Torpor"This is an intense, intelligent novel that paints a vivid picture of an America that most of us refuse to see, are afraid to see. This is real art." — Percival Everett, author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier"A book that's both pure as snow and filthy as dirty, with the lovely detachment of ice. Like Beckett, Ehrenreich has the talent of being particular and general at once, and thus steps outisde of time" — Lydia Millet, Pulizer Prize finalist for Love in Infant Monkeys"Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land." — John Banville, author of The Infinities"Ben Ehenreich transforms the brutal human and urban blight into a landscape of cosmic battle. Ether is a dark, complex, richly written, beautiful novel. It is a rarity in American fiction today." — Frederic Tuten, author of Self Portraits: Fictions"Ether, perhaps even more than his previous novel, The Suitors, shows Ben Ehrenreich unafraid of storytelling that is terrifically bold and sly." — Sesshu Foster, author of World Ball NotebookBen Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. Ether is his second novel.Praise for Ben Ehrenreich's first novel The Suitors:"Smart and postmodern in a puckish, Calvino-like sense. . . . Ehrenreich writes with an ease and pure line-by-line skill that's rare."The New York Times Book Review"Ehrenreich blends Tom Robbins' sly humor with Steve Erickson's bubbling sense of the subconscious and Voltaire's irreverent twists of plot."Los Angeles Times Book Review"Ehrenreich shows the stirrings of an original talent."Publishers Weekly"Brilliant, and at the same time moving. It's a relief to know that literature exists yet."Juan Goytisolo

Ether

United States

City Lights Publishers

Based loosely on 'The Odyssey', this novel focuses less on the Odysseus character (renamed Payne) than on the Penelope character (now Penny), following the eyebrow-raising exploits of her much-maligned, ill-fated suitors.

Counterpoint

Penguin Press

Layering climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, this New York Times Notable Book presents a stunning reckoning with our current moment and with the literal and figurative end of time. Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. As inhabitants of the Anthropocene, what might some of our own histories tell us about how to confront apocalypse? And how might the geologies and ecologies of desert spaces inform how we see and act toward time--the pasts we have erased and paved over, this anxious present, the future we have no choice but to build? Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask how we might reckon with the uncertainty that surrounds us and fight off the crises that have already begun. In the canyons and oases of the Mojave and in Las Vegas's neon apocalypse, Ehrenreich finds beauty, and even hope, surging up in the most unlikely places, from the most barren rocks, and the apparent emptiness of the sky. Desert Notebooks is a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present--unflinching, urgent--yet timeless and profound.

Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Review\nA New York Times Notable Book 
Editors' Choice, The New York Times Book Review 
An Amazon Best Book of the Month in Nonfiction 
One of New York Public Library's Best Books of the Year\n"Startlingly original . . . Out of love and despair (where else does art come from?), he has built a potent memorial to our own ongoing end-times." --William Atkins, The New York Times Book Review\n"It's my kind of modern adventure story, relying on introspection, critical thinking and creativity." --Stacey Lewis, City Lights Books, The Wall Street Journal\n"Writing from deserts across the Southwest--whose tenacious landscape is dotted with Army bases and urban outposts--he draws on Mayan creation myths, anthropological accounts of the decimated Sioux, and Presidential tweets to chronicle humankind's destructive nature. The breadth of reference lends perspective to our continuing struggle to achieve sustainability: as Ehrenreich writes, 'We are not the first people to believe we are living at the end of time.'" --The New Yorker\n"In his timely new book, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time, a hybrid memoir, travelogue and metaphysical inquiry, Ben Ehrenreich explores how our perception of time changes in a crisis--a crisis like climate change, or COVID-19 . . . [He] fuses the personal with the political in reflections on climate change, the president's disaster du jour and his extensive reading in the desert." --Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times\n"Confessional, contemplative, intellectually adventurous, Ben Ehrenreich's Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time is a worthy addition to the library of American aridity . . . Ehrenreich's intellectual explorations are challenging but never pretentious . . . [He] shows that deserts can make us wise in new ways." --Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle\n"A book about the apocalypse shouldn't be uplifting; but somehow this book manages to be, while at the same time remaining very unflinching. Ehrenreich writes about a lot more than the desert in this book. He's weaving a tale for how we got here. But after you read it, you won't be able to stop thinking about where we are headed." --Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review's Best Nonfiction of the Month\n"A tapestry of aphorisms and personal essays, colonial history and ancient legends . . . Desert Notebooks is a searing indictment of the ascendance of white supremacy over more than 200 years and how the orthodoxy of capitalism has set us on a collision course with climate change." --Jonathan Hahn, Sierra\n"Essential reading about the place and the rest of the world as it relates to it . . . The mix of science, myth, anecdotes, and a profound love for the terrain produces one of my favorite reads of the spring thus far, if not the year." --Chris La Tray, Buzzfeed\n"Ehrenreich's good for a grand insight . . . With minimal exertion, he skips across far-distant geographies, cosmogonies, and temporalities, eyes peeled for the just-right detail, the flecks of cultural glue, and any mention whatsoever of his constant guide, the owl. When he makes a connection, it's for all of us." --Jason Kehe, Wired\n"Desert Notebooks is a strong contender for my best book of the year. Author Ben Ehrenreich offers a profound and lyrical meditation on history, nature, myth, and our changing concepts of time against the backdrop of our ongoing political upheaval and a climate crisis that isn't going away." --Tom Beans, The Weekly Source\n"A remarkable work of cultural history and environmental polemic, at once a stirring portrait of the desert in its purest form and a lament for what's been done to it in the name of progress." --Mark Athitakis, Inside Hook\n"Ehrenreich is a bold choreographer, skipping from black holes and Mayan myths to the 'breathtaking racism' of Hegel and mystic wheels in the stories of Borges . . . He skips with intent, each apparently random insight sparking off the next . . . Engrossing." --Barbara Kiser, Los Angeles Review of Books\n"An urg

Professionals & Academics

Counterpoint LLC

A stunning reckoning of our current moment and our all-too-human urge to grapple with apocalypse

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Dreamscape Media

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ehrenreich, Ben. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ehrenreich, Ben

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ehrenreich, Ben. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

The Suitors: A Novel

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

Ether

The Suitors: A Novel

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time