Alexander Hay's 3 favorite reads in 2024

This is an impeccably researched book that is given a human perspective, as if one is there observing the events, characters and emotions as they happened. My work has taken me to various parts of Israel, Gaza and the surrounding area/countries on numerous occasions. Over time, one gains an easy familiarity with an incomplete and assumed history that doesn't fit the various rhetoric, but fits personal observations, experiences and conversations. This book fundamentally changed that easy familiarity, challenging what I thought I knew, filling gaps and exposing me to new insights and ways of looking at my own experiences in the region. The narrative genuinely carries the reader through the generations of two families, making sense of the extraordinary passions and experiences, and how some cannot let go of the past while others seek an accommodation that makes a shared future possible. Of course, the conflicts that have expanded across this region over the last year once again force a reset of conditions, but the Lemon Tree affords a fractional understanding of how intensely human the last 80 years of history have been in the region.

Persia has always fascinated me. When Cyrus the Great laid out the Persian Empire 3,000 years ago, many of the principles he applied are today recognized as resilience and adptation planning. Unsurprisingly, we had to learn so many of these lessons again and again. So much so, that today we think we have achieved great policy and planning insights only to discover that the ancients had been quite adept at them. Time again, whether infrastructure planning, emergency management, social capital, irrigation, agriculture, medicine or the sciences, the adept ancients turn out to include Persians. So how did such an extraordinary heritage and culture become so misunderstood by the West?
I had looked for a decent history that connected ancient Persia to modern Iran for some time. A friend recommended this book. Mr. Polk is the archetypal foreign policy wonk, and only he could have written this book. Often, as I read the various anecdotes, I had those "ahh-hah" moments where things just clicked. I read the book twice and find myself referring back to it. I know that I am significantly better informed than before and recognize in equal measure how much I have yet to learn. Whether your interest in Iran begins and ends with Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat or if you'd like to better understand the internal dynamics of a country once again centre stage in history, this book will help you understand.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sapiens and later devoured Homo Deus. I like the author's style, approach and flow of argument. That's not to say I always agree or think that something may be missing or simplified, but that's also part of the reading experience - that the imagination is stimulated and assumptions challenged. In short, his books are always thought provoking. Consequently, I seized this copy as soon as I could and thoroughly enjoyed my first read and have returned to it to re-read some sections in slower time. I value the opportunity to read and internalize the ideas, processing and developing them to not simply enhance my understanding, but take an informed position on a topic. Harari provides that opportunity.