Fathom – Topic – Book Reviews

Book review | Israel and Palestine Alternative Perspectives on Statehood

By John Strawson
It is extraordinary that 70 years after the UN partition resolution we are still discussing the future of... Read more > Spring 2017

On Chaim Gans on the Jewish Diaspora

By Michael Walzer
Fathom has invited a series of writers to respond to Chaim Gans’s A Political Theory for the Jewish... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory

By Kyle Orton
Brian Fishman's The Master Plan provides a comprehensive history of the Islamic State’s (IS) strategic evolution, covering the... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu

By Colin Shindler
Admiration and respect are not words usually attached to the persona of Benjamin Netanyahu by either friend or... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Luke Akehurst
I tried to read Dreams Deferred in the conventional style, cover to cover. Bad idea. The book isn’t... Read more > Winter 2016

Book review | A Horse Walks Into a Bar

By Liam Hoare
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, an opening line to many a haggard joke, is not necessarily what... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Tragic Encounters and Ordinary Ethics: Palestine-Israel in British Universities

By Keith Kahn-Harris
The publication of this book could hardly be better timed. The disturbance at a Friends of Israel Society... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East

By David Lowe
In 2013, shortly after his nomination for US Defence Secretary, then Senator Chuck Hagel purchased three dozen copies... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism

By Philip Spencer
To say this is a timely book is something of an understatement. Over the past few months, evidence... Read more > Autumn 2016

Book Review │ Judas

By Liam Hoare
Amos Oz was 14 when, two years after his mother took her own life, he left the city... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness

By Colin Shindler
This latest work from Avi Shilon describes in detail Ben-Gurion’s last decade – from stepping down as prime... Read more > Autumn 2016

Book Review │ Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War

By James Sorene
Israel’s military operations always have a name. As a mark of his achievement in June 1967, Chief of... Read more > Autumn 2016

Lies, Damned Lies and the Academic Boycott of Israel

By Michael Yudkin
Oxford University academic Michael Yudkin critiques the ‘Academic boycott’ promoted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and... Read more > Summer 2016

Book Review│Doomed to Succeed: The US- Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama

By David Lowe
On 12 May 1948, nearly six months after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into separate Jewish... Read more > Summer 2016

Book Review│Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism

By Colin Shindler
The Italian academic, Michele Battini examines the gradual transformation of the traditional Christian anti-Semitic charge of usury into... Read more > Summer 2016

Book Review | Diasporic Activism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Keith Kahn-Harris
One of the most striking features of intra-Jewish conflicts over Israel in the UK and elsewhere in the... Read more > Spring 2016

Book Review | Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel

By Matti Friedman
Einat Wilf's book Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel is available on Amazon or... Read more > Autumn 2015

Book Review│Australia & Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship

By Philip Mendes
Australia and Israel are superficially the oddest of couples. They are geographically distant, and massively different in size.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Book Review |Catch The Jew!

By Michael Wegier
Tuvia Tenenbom is a product of the Ultra-Orthodox community in B'nai Brak, near Tel Aviv. He grew up... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review | Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide

By David Lowe
David E. Lowe is the Vice President for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions

By James Bloodworth
What has happened to the secular and democratic left? It would be an exaggeration to say that everywhere... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis

By Luke Akehurst
Boycotting Israel is Wrong is a timely short book on the BDS phenomenon by Australian academics Philip Mendes... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review | Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel

By Colin Shindler
Berl Katznelson, one of Labour Zionism’s ideological founders described David Ben-Gurion as ‘history’s gift to the Jewish people.’... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | The Hilltop

By Liam Hoare
The Hilltop is the first Israeli novel to chronicle the inner lives of the settlers that has been... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel

By Michael Allen
700 British artists have announced that they are boycotting Israel until the ‘colonial oppression of Palestinians’ ends. In... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

By David Cesarani
Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism

By Dave Rich
First, the disclosure: Ben Cohen is a friend and comrade who was kind enough to invite me to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel

By Robert Fine
It is a feature of our times that certain aspects of what Israel has become – notably its... Read more > Autumn 2014

Jerusalem Solitudes in Early Hebrew Literature

By Noga Emanuel
As the spiritual bedrock of Judaism, Jerusalem had been a magnet for millennial longing. For centuries Jews intensely... Read more > Spring 2014

East meets West in film

By Yair Raveh
It is not only in politics and the street that Israel’s ethnic tensions surface. Our film reviewer Yair... Read more > Spring 2014

Finding the Words: a review essay

By Liam Hoare
Books under review: Falling Out of Time David Grossman, Jonathan Cape, 2014, pp.208; Neuland, Eshkol Nevo, Chatto &... Read more > Spring 2014

Film Review: Bethlehem vs. Omar

By Yair Raveh
The media pitted one against the other. It was indeed a catchy story: two films from two sides... Read more > Winter 2014

Do look back: Lou Reed’s Jewish soul music

By Steven Lee Beeber
When I was writing my book about the Jewish origins of punk, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s, I referred... Read more > Winter 2014

Sakhir the Rock Opera: an interview with Yariv Ben-Yehuda

By Yariv Ben-Yehuda
Yariv Ben-Yehuda is the co-creator, along with Erez Cohen of the rock opera Sakhir, a high-octane romp through... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One

By Andrei S. Markovits
Growing up in the West Romanian town of Timisoara in the 1950s as the only child of a... Read more > Autumn 2013

The Making of Within the Eye of the Storm: an interview with Bassam Aramin, Rami Elhanan and Shelley Hermon

By Alan Johnson
Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, a Palestinian and Israeli, were once dedicated fighters willing to kill and be... Read more > Autumn 2013

Letting the right one in: the rise of the Israeli horror film

By Yair Raveh
This has got to be the most surprising, and thrilling, of all trends to have ever emerged in... Read more > Autumn 2013

Israeli cinema: gay but not queer

By Yair Raveh
Israeli cinema has been more mainstream and gay than subversive and queer. But that may be about to... Read more > Summer 2013

Can two walk together?

By A.B Yehoshua
An extract from a play by A.B. Yehoshua. Translated by David Janner-Klausner and adapted for stage by Amy... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel reinvents the documentary

By Yair Raveh
The Gatekeepers is a masterpiece in a landmark year for Israeli documentaries. The last fifteen years have seen... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Reviews