Drawing on newly declassified documents, this behind-the-scenes story of Israel's first year as a sovereign state presents revelations about the attitudes and actions of the Jewish state-builders

1949: The First Israelis (English and Hebrew Edition)

History

Segev, Tom

Middle East

Free Press

Uses interviews and personnel files in an attempt to understand the commandants and members of the SS who oversaw the Nazi concentration camps and tries to explain their participation in the Holocaust

Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps (English and Hebrew Edition)

Americas

McGraw=Hill

Simon Wiesenthal

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

DOUBLEDAY

Tom Segev's widely-acclaimed work has changed the way we view the history of Israel. In this new book, he turns his expertise to the period before the creation of the state, the three decades when Palestine was ruled by the British Empire; and to Britain's promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land.Drawing on a wealth of fascinating, heretofore untapped archival material and primary sources, Segev reconstructs in vivid detail the tumultuous era when anything seemed possible and everything went awry. Here are the legendary figures - General Allenby, Lawrence of Arabia, King Faisal, Chaim Weitzman, David Ben-Gurion as well as an array of pioneers, immigrants, secret agents, diplomats and fanatics, all participants in a multicultural spectacle of revolution and decadence, prophecy and illusion.Sensitive to all perspectives, Segev tracks the rise of the two national movements and their steady advance towards confrontation. And with the originality that is his hallmark, he offers the controversial thesis that the British, far from being pro-Arabist as commonly thought, consistently favoured the Zionist position, thereby ensuring the creation of the Jewish state; and that they did so out of the mistaken - and anti-Semitic - belief that the Jews turned the wheels of history.

One Palestine Complete

Little,Brown & Co

1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East

Europe

Metropolitan Books

Language:Chinese.Paperback. Pub Date: 2008-5-1 Pages: 822 Publisher: Little Brown 1967 did not mark the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinianconflict. but it was a year that changed the course of history.When Egypts President Nasser closed the straits of Tiran toIsraeli navigation. it triggered a conflict between Israel and thearmies of Jordan. Syria and Egypt. Within six days the Israelis hadoccupied territories three times wider than their own. populated byover a million Palestinian Arabs. Israel suddenly became somethingof a colonial empire. more Goliath than David. The war grantedpolitical legitimacy to Menachem Begins right-wing Herut party. and Arab terrorism paved the way for Israels secret service tobecome a major factor in the countrys power structure. 1967 willnot be a military history. nor will it focus mainly on politicaldevelopments. The year 1967 dramatically al...

1967: Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

Asia

ABACUS +

2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "[A] fascinating biography . . . a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man . . . this is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power." ―The Economist As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma―he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding. 
In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments”―from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance, and explores his tempestuous private life, including the testimony of four former lovers.
The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost”―at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill―a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.

A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion

Community & Culture

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

This first fully documented biography of Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, is also a brilliant character study of a man whose life was part invention but wholly dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for their crimes and that the destruction of European Jewry never be forgotten. Like most Jews in Eastern Europe on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, twenty-four-year-old Simon Wiesenthal did not grasp the nature of the Nazi threat. But six years later, when a skeletal Wiesenthal was liberated from the concentration camp at Mauthausen, he fully fathomed the crimes of the Nazis. Within days he had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi war criminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would make over a lifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthal was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, when others preferred to forget. For this new biography, rich in newsworthy revelations, historian and journalist Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal’s private papers and to sixteen archives, including records of the U.S., Israeli, Polish, and East German secret services. Segev is able to reveal the intriguing secrets of Wiesenthal’s life, including his stunning role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his relationship with Israel’s Mossad, his controversial investigative techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert Speer, and the nature of his rivalry with Elie Wiesel. Segev’s challenge in writing this biography was Wiesenthal’s own complicated relationship to truth. Wiesenthal told many versions of his life, his suffering in the camps, and his involvement with the arrest of individual Nazis. Segev shows that in order to gain the information he sought and twist the arms of reluctant government figures, Wiesenthal needed to seem more influential than he really was. For two generations of Americans, Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish superhero—depicted on film by Ben Kingsley and Laurence Olivier—and the muse for a Frederick Forsyth thriller. Now Segev demonstrates that the truth of Wiesenthal’s existence is as compelling as the fiction. Simon Wiesenthal is an unforgettable life of one of the great men of the twentieth century.

Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends

Uses interviews and personnel files in an attempt to understand the commandants and members of the SS who oversaw the Nazi concentration camps and tries to explain their participation in the Holocaust

Soldiers Of Evil

BERKLEY

Segev explores the dramatic period before the creation of the state, when Britain ruled over "one Palestine, complete" (as noted in the receipt signed by the high commissioner) and when its promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land set in motion the conflict that haunts the region to this day.

One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

Diane Pub Co.

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