Fathom – Topic – Book Reviews

Book Review | In the Shadow of the Wall

By Alex Stein
A few years ago, I built a special tour for a group of Diaspora Jews who were in... Read more > November 2023

Book Review | Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

By Liam Hoare
At the time of another episode in the Israel-Hamas conflict, Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Amos Oz opened... Read more > November 2023

Book Review | Challenging the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: Twenty Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns

By Kenneth Waltzer
This collection of essays prepared by Ronnie and Lola Fraser, veteran British anti-BDS activists, assesses how friends of... Read more > Article

The Imperative of Liberal Zionism: A Response to Anthony Julius’ essay ‘Whither Liberal Zionism?'

By Toby Greene
Toby Greene is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, and former deputy-editor of Fathom. His publications include:... Read more > September 2023

TV Review: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

By Noga Emanuel
Noga Emanuel reviews the TV series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a dramatic adaptation of Sarit Yishai-Levy’s bestselling... Read more > September 2023

Rewriting the History of the Corbyn Years (Part 2): Agenda Journalism in Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism

By John Ware
John Ware was the reporter for the 2019 BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? In Part 1 of... Read more > September 2023

Book Review | Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation

By Marc Goldberg
Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation is perhaps the... Read more > July 2023

Book Review | The Antisemitic Origins of Islamist Violence: A Study of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State

By Daniel Ben-Ami
Islamism is one of the least understood forms of anti-Semitism. Leave to one side those who foolishly romanticise... Read more > May 2023

The 1936 Revolt still rages today: an interview with Oren Kessler

By Oren Kessler
Oren Kessler’s new book Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict (Rowman... Read more > May 2023

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World And How You Can Change It

By Daniel Ben-Ami
Dave Rich’s book on that thorniest of subjects, anti-Semitism, has already received many plaudits including glowing testimonials from... Read more > May 2023

Book Review | Sharing the Promised Land: In Pursuit of Equality Between Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel

By Eugene Bardach
Pity the soul who has to forsake those sentimental (or rousing) Zionist songs of her youth, like Shir... Read more > April 2023

Book Review | Israel 201: Your Next Level Guide to the Magic and Mystery and Chaos of Life in the...

By Amy Weinreb
The world has reached a saturation point with Israel 101 books. We have enough options to guide readers... Read more > April 2023

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

By Sarah Brown
Everyday Hate’s clarity and engaging style make it an invaluable introduction to antisemitism; however, it also has plenty... Read more > March 2023

Book review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

By Kathleen Hayes
‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ – William Faulkner In the early hours of... Read more > March 2023

Book Review | Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity

By Liam Hoare
On 28 September 1973, two Palestinian terrorists from the Syrian Ba’athist faction As-Sa'iqa hijacked a train near Marchegg... Read more > February 2023

Book Review | British Trade Unions, the Labour Party, and Israel’s Histadrut

By Luke Akehurst
Ronnie Fraser has been bravely fighting a sometimes lonely battle against antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the British trade... Read more > February 2023

Book Review | Victorious

By Liam Hoare
‘Unlike others, I am no longer slaughtering sacred cows,’ Amos Oz told Niva Lanir in a 2012 interview... Read more > February 2023

Book Review | Bibi, My Story

By Yisrael Medad
The memoirs of politicians and public figures, it has been claimed, are among the most popular form of... Read more > December 2022

Book Review | Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

By Kathleen Hayes
This is a very important book. Over the last decade or so, a sweeping ideology that looks much... Read more > November 2022

Book Review | Bibi: My Story

By Colin Shindler
When he was asked by a student in 2018, what is the most important subject to study for... Read more > November 2022

Book Review | Bibi: My Story

By Anshel Pfeffer
Back in 2017, I sat with a group of Israeli colleagues in a small hotel conference room in... Read more > November 2022

Book Review | Breaking History: A White House Memoir

By Colin Shindler
Jared Kushner's account of his four years in the Trump White House produces several interesting revelations. It is... Read more > September 2022

Book Review | Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Jonathan G. Campbell
This lengthy edited volume contains an introduction, sixteen chapters (organized into Parts I-III), appendix (on the history of... Read more > September 2022

Book Review | Israel’s Moment: International Support and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949

By John Strawson
Herf’s book forensically demolishes the myth that the West set out to create Israel to promote its interests.... Read more > July 2022

Book Review | The Wealthy: Chronicle of a Jewish Family (1763-1948)

By Liam Hoare
At the age of 40, having worked as a teacher and an official in the Israeli education ministry... Read more > July 2022

‘What is your nation, if I may ask?’: Antisemitism and Zionism in James Joyce’s Ulysses

By Noga Emanuel
In 2022 book-lovers celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, which tracks the... Read more > June 2022

Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai | An interview with Matti Friedman

By Matti Friedman
In early March, Fathom's deputy editor Calev Ben-Dor sat down with Matti Friedman to discuss his new book,... Read more > March 2022

Book Review | Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

By Calev Ben-Dor
Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai is the latest in Matti Friedman’s wonderful array of books... Read more > March 2022

The Three Best Books on Understanding Evil

By Stephen de Wijze
Stephen de Wijze is senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Manchester and the co-editor with... Read more > May 2022

Book Review | The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism

By Colin Shindler
While many look to the rise of both Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany to understand the Left's evolution... Read more > February 2022

The Israel Question and the Left: A Review Essay

By Barry Finger
Barry Finger is a frequent contributor to US socialist journals, a former shop steward and activist with the Public... Read more > January 2022

Rereading | The Idea of the Jewish State by Ben Halpern

By Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine is Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Emirita Professor of Government at Smith College.... Read more > January 2022

Book Review | The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness

By Philip Spencer
The subtitle of this interesting memoir is ‘comfort in rootlessness’. This formulation is, as the author suggests, a... Read more > December 2021

Thomas Mann’s Philo-Semitism and Colm Toibin’s Thomas Mann

By Shalom Goldman
In January 1934, the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior revoked the novelist Thomas Mann’s German citizenship, in... Read more > December 2021

Book Review | War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East

By Efraim Halevy
Gershom Gorenberg, a historian and journalist, has spent years researching and writing this account of dramatic events in... Read more > November 2021

The Fourth Window, or the Wounds of Amos Oz

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare says The Fourth Window, a new documentary about Amos Oz by the Israeli filmmaker Yair Qedar,... Read more > November 2021

Book Review | Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of...

By Khinvraj Jangid
Growing up Jewish in India is a book about the Jews of India told from a variety of... Read more > October 2021

Book Review | Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in The Soviet Union

By Yisrael Medad
From 1962, when Matzot for Russia’s Jews for the upcoming Passover holiday were dumped on the pavement in... Read more > October 2021

Book Review | More Than I Love My Life

By Liam Hoare
In October 1951, Rade Panić—who had fought for Josip Broz Tito’s partisans during the Second World War—committed suicide... Read more > September 2021

Rereadings | The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner

By Liam Hoare
‘The ultimate insider’s account’ wrote George Gruen on the release of Yehuda Avner’s book The Prime Ministers in... Read more > July 2021

Book Reviews

Book Review | In the Shadow of the Wall

Book Review | Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

Book Review | Challenging the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: Twenty Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns

The Imperative of Liberal Zionism: A Response to Anthony Julius’ essay ‘Whither Liberal Zionism?'

TV Review: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

Rewriting the History of the Corbyn Years (Part 2): Agenda Journalism in Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism

Book Review | Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation

Book Review | The Antisemitic Origins of Islamist Violence: A Study of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State

The 1936 Revolt still rages today: an interview with Oren Kessler

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World And How You Can Change It

Book Review | Sharing the Promised Land: In Pursuit of Equality Between Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel

Book Review | Israel 201: Your Next Level Guide to the Magic and Mystery and Chaos of Life in the...

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

Book review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

Book Review | Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity

Book Review | British Trade Unions, the Labour Party, and Israel’s Histadrut

Book Review | Victorious

Book Review | Bibi, My Story

Book Review | Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

Book Review | Bibi: My Story

Book Review | Bibi: My Story

Book Review | Breaking History: A White House Memoir

Book Review | Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Book Review | Israel’s Moment: International Support and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949

Book Review | The Wealthy: Chronicle of a Jewish Family (1763-1948)

‘What is your nation, if I may ask?’: Antisemitism and Zionism in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai | An interview with Matti Friedman

Book Review | Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

The Three Best Books on Understanding Evil

Book Review | The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism

The Israel Question and the Left: A Review Essay

Rereading | The Idea of the Jewish State by Ben Halpern

Book Review | The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness

Thomas Mann’s Philo-Semitism and Colm Toibin’s Thomas Mann

Book Review | War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East

The Fourth Window, or the Wounds of Amos Oz

Book Review | Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of...

Book Review | Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in The Soviet Union

Book Review | More Than I Love My Life

Rereadings | The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner

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