Fathom – Topic – Book Reviews

Book Review | Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East

By Simon Waldman
Soner Cagaptay is the director of the Turkish Research Programme at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy... Read more > March 2020

Book Review | Antisemitism and the Labour Party

By Sarah Brown
Antisemitism and the Labour Party is an anthology of reissued articles and essays which sets out to provide... Read more > March 2020

Book Review | The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts

By Paul Iddon
Following the infamous, and seemingly unstoppable, rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and its bloody takeover of large... Read more > February 2020

Book Review | We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel

By William Kolbrener
Daniel Gordis’s We Stand Divided is the latest book on the growing rift between American Jews and Israelis.... Read more > January 2020

Book Review | After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East

By Brandon Marlon
We’ve encountered the toponyms repeatedly in the headlines: Sinjar. Raqqa. Kirkuk. Kobane. Baghuz. But we’ve done so from... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the Israeli Peace Movements

By John Lyndon
Plays tend to have three acts. In his excellent and very timely ‘Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State

By Eve Garrard
This is a horrifying book. Not because it's a bad book – on the contrary, Cary Nelson has... Read more > November 2019

Book Review | The Impact of Zionism and Israel on Anglo-Jewry’s Identity 1948-1982: Caught Somewhere Between Zion and Galut

By Azriel Bermant
Jack Omer-Jackaman’s book could not be more timely given the challenge facing Diaspora Jewry today, with heightened concerns... Read more > November 2019

Book Review | Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, The Party & Public Belief

By Sarah Brown
Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, The Party & Public Belief sets out to reveal ‘the reality behind the... Read more > November 2019

Book Review | Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
A better title for this book would have been Original Sin: Britain’s Embrace of the Zionist Movement. In... Read more > October 2019

Book review | Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey

By Michael Sercan Daventry
When the US announced that it was pulling out of northeast Syria and Turkish forces began pouring in,... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed

By Cary Nelson
‘The world would be soooo much better without jews man.’ This post from a social media account appears... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief

By Stan Crooke
This review first appeared in the British socialist newspaper Solidarity. In February of this year, Chris Williamson, Labour... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

By Izabella Tabarovsky
One of the best-known antisemitic slogans of the August 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally in Charlottesville,... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965-1974

By Norman J.W. Goda
Acknowledging German guilt for the Holocaust, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer helped initiate in the early 1950s a relationship with... Read more > July 2019

Book Review | The Great Betrayal: How America abandoned the Kurds and lost the Middle East

By Paul Iddon
The thesis of David E. Philips’ book The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned The Kurds And Lost The... Read more > June 2019

Book Review | Understanding Israel: political, societal and security challenges

By Jacob Eriksson
Israel represents a collection of seeming contradictions. Though Theodor Herzl’s vision was a thoroughly secular one and the... Read more > June 2019

In His Novels, And His Columns, Sayed Kashua Examines His Divided Self

By Liam Hoare
‘I wanted to say to my wife that this is really the end, it’s finished,’ the Arab-Israeli writer... Read more > May 2019

Book Review | Israel's Long War with Hezbollah: Military Innovation and Adaption Under Fire

By Rob Geist Pinfold
The old adage that ‘generals are always prepared to fight the last war’ encapsulates the on-going exchange of... Read more > April 2019

Anziska's 'Preventing Palestine': An Exchange (1) Joel Singer's Review

By Joel Singer
Joel Singer, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator, critically reviews Seth Anziska’s book, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from... Read more > February 2019

Anziska's 'Preventing Palestine': An Exchange (2) Seth Anziska Replies to Singer

By Seth Anziska
Seth Anziska replies to Oslo negotiator Joel Singers’s critical review of his book Preventing Palestine: A Political History... Read more > February 2019

Book Review | Sinjar: 14 Days that Saved the Yazidis from Islamic State

By Paul Iddon
Download a PDF version here. Susan Shand’s book is a moving account of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) genocide... Read more > January 2019

Fathom Review 2016

By Fathom Editors
Preface by Tim Marshall With the kaleidoscope still being shaken, in this age of uncertainty, Fathom’s role is... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Self-Determination, Statehood and the Law of Negotiation: The Case of Palestine

By John Strawson
Robert Barnidge’s important book seeks to persuade us to view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the prism of what... Read more > December 2018

Book Review | Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

By Kyle Orton
Carter Malkasian sets out in Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State... Read more > July 2018

Book Review | Enemies and Neighbours; Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

By Asher Susser
Ian Black has written a very well-researched, comprehensive and insightful survey of a century of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, from... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | Being Kurdish in a Hostile World

By Paul Iddon
Ayub Nuri was born in the wrong place, or so he likes to quip. He comes from Halabja... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | Days of the Fall: A Reporter's Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars

By Michael Stephens
An eye witness to some of the most violent episodes in the history of both Iraq and Syria,... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | In Search of Israel: The history of an idea

By Colin Shindler
The renowned sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, a refugee from the anti-Semitic campaign in Communist Poland during the 1960s and... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | The Netanyahu Years

By Simon Smith
Part biography, part political thriller and part unflinching gaze on the decision-making processes of Israel’s political and security... Read more > May 2018

Book Review | Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Anti-Semitism and Gender

By Colin Shindler
This important book is based on an international conference on Jews and the Left held in New York... Read more > February 2018

Book Review | The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Reflection from No Man’s Land

By Lauren Mellinger
In his new memoir The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Reflection from No Man’s Land former UN... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The Left in Disarray

By Colin Shindler
Most of the time, the key terms of the anti-capitalist Left have no clear meaning, they express and... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
A book about the League of Nations, let alone one of its little known subsections, the Permanent Mandates... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | All the Rivers

By Liam Hoare
It is hard to know how to talk about Dorit Rabinyan’s third novel, All the Rivers, an elegant,... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | Colonialism and the Jews

By John Strawson
Jews, like other peoples, have been much affected by the history of colonialism and empire. The Babylonian exile... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | The Shell

By Kyle Orton
In Syria, the West has been keen not to repeat the mistakes of Iraq — defined as being... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation

By Cary Nelson
Kingdom of Olives And Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, is a... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman

By Neill Lochery
I must warn the reader at the start of this review of a couple of personal points that... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | A Political Theory for the Jewish People

By Nahshon Perez
A Political Theory for the Jewish People is a fascinating book, offering a rich and nuanced discussion of... Read more > Spring 2017