Here are 100 books that Facts on the Ground fans have personally recommended if you like
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Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
This was the first book to bring in one place the Palestinian narrative after years of denying it and allowing only the Israeli/Zionist narrative to dominate both the public and the scholarly domains in the West. Said's elegant prose contributed made that history accessible to a large audience of readers.
This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate--one that remains as critical as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile's passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied--as well as in the conscience of the West. He has updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as…
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
This lexicon of the destroyed Palestinian villages of 1948 illustrated to a wide readership the scope and meaning of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. In short installments, a whole history that is wiped out is reconstructed as part of the struggle against denial.
This authoritative reference work describes in detail the more than 400 Palestinian villages that were destroyed or depopulated by Israel in 1948. Little of these once-thriving communities remains: not only have they been erased from the Palestinian landscape, their very names have been removed from contemporary Israeli maps. But to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in their diaspora, these villages were home, and continue to be poignantly powerful symbols of their personal and national identity.
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
There is no way of understanding the Palestinian catastrophe without understanding the role of Zionism as an ideology and praxis in bringing it about. This book is the first methodic analysis of how Zionist ideology from the very beginning of the Zionist project prepared the ground for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
There is no better way of understanding what it means to be a Palestinian than reading a personal account. When this account is written by one of the veteran activists on behalf of Palestine in the West and a scholar by her own right, the reward is even greater for the reader of this autobiographical tale.
Ghada Karmi's acclaimed memoir relates her childhood in Palestine, the flight to Britain after the catastrophe of 1948, and coming of age in the coffee-bars of Golders Green, the middle-class Jewish quarter in North London. A gentle humor describes the bizarre and sometimes tense realities that mask her life in 'Little Tel Aviv' and, later, her struggle, like that of many other women in the late fifties, to get a university grant to study medicine. Ghada's personal story is set against the continuing crisis in the Middle East. "In Search of Fatima" reminds us that the only crime the Palestinians…
I love stories, and as a child I found that some of the best and most powerful stories I ever heard were those that people told about the past. When I grew up, I pursued a career as an academic archaeologist and historian, and I am now Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna. But while I am of course interested in the past, in recent years I have been increasingly thinking about the politics of the past as well. Why do we choose to celebrate some stories about the past and not others? I have found these books all useful in helping me to think through this.
This more recent book focuses specifically on archaeology, which is my own area of expertise, and so I rushed to buy it when it first came out.
I don’t agree with absolutely everything in it, but it’s the mark of a good book if you come away with a head full of questions and exciting thoughts, which I definitely did with this one!
Archaeology, Nation, and Race is a must-read book for students of archaeology and adjacent fields. It demonstrates how archaeology and concepts of antiquity have shaped, and have been shaped by colonialism, race, and nationalism. Structured as a lucid and lively dialogue between two leading scholars, the volume compares modern Greece and modern Israel - two prototypical and influential cases - where archaeology sits at the very heart of the modern national imagination. Exchanging views on the foundational myths, moral economies, and racial prejudices in the field of archaeology and beyond, Hamilakis and Greenberg explore topics such as the colonial origins…
I first became intrigued by secret societies when a student who I worked with suggested that the French Upper Paleolithic painted caves might have been decorated and used by secret societies. I subsequently enlisted another student to study the spatial use of the paintings from this perspective. Combined with the observations of Robert Hare on the motivations of psychopaths and sociopaths to control others, I realized that secret societies plausibly constituted powerful forces promoting certain cultural changes that appeared later and continued into our own modern societies. I found the prospects for understanding our own cultures fascinating and wanted to document how this all came about in my own book.
This is a bit more of a technical archaeology book dealing with the ethnographic and archaeological Pueblo communities of the American Southwest. For those interested in secret societies, it deals extensively with the nature of Pueblo ritual organizations (sodalities) and deftly provides critiques of views that these were egalitarian communities and ritual organizations. In fact, he argues that some were among the most non-egalitarian societies in North America, beginning with the Chacoan culture about 1,000 years ago. Puebloan ritual organizations are prime examples of secret societies.
In A Pueblo Social History, John Ware challenges modern anthropologists to break down the walls between archaeology and ethnography in order to obtain a more complete understanding of Pueblo prehistory in the American Southwest. This book stands or falls on two arguments. The first is Pueblo ethnographies by early scholars - including Cushing, Bandelier, and Fewkes who were simultaneously ethnographers and archaeologists and therefore incorporated origin stories, migration narratives, and other oral traditions along with lines of evidence such as artifacts and architecture - are more than speculative analogies. Pueblo ethnographies are end points on trajectories that preserve important information…
I study culture. Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by what people think, feel, believe, have, and do. I’ve always wondered why people need things to be meaningful. Why do people need an explanation for why things happen that puts the meaning outside their own minds? I wanted to get beyond the need for things to be meaningful by themselves, so I began looking into meaning-making as a thing we do. Once I realized the process was infinitely more interesting and valuable, I read books like those on my list. I hope they spark you as much as they have me.
I love that Ingold uses the concept of design to explore how people make meaning and things meaningful. By bringing me through lenses such as architecture, archaeology, and art, he shows me that design is not a process of doing but of making.
When we design, we do so by constructing meaning and knowledge. The artifacts that come from my design thinking are secondary effects of the thinking and meaning-making. I love being brought into a larger point of view on the everyday activities of my own life.
Making creates knowledge, builds environments and transforms lives. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture are all ways of making, and all are dedicated to exploring the conditions and potentials of human life. In this exciting book, Tim Ingold ties the four disciplines together in a way that has never been attempted before. In a radical departure from conventional studies that treat art and architecture as compendia of objects for analysis, Ingold proposes an anthropology and archaeology not of but with art and architecture. He advocates a way of thinking through making in which sentient practitioners and active materials continually answer to,…
I've always loved history and it was the subject I took my degree in. After a career in business I've come back to history. I have an interest in how Britain has shaped our world; it has influenced more parts of the world than any other nation, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Jerusalem is the most pivotal city in the world and Britain has played a role in its long history. One part of this history is what led me to tell the story of an incredible British-led expedition to Jerusalem at the start of the 20th century, which sought the Ark of the Covenant.
Jerusalem has been conquered, destroyed, and plundered throughout its history. Successive conquerors have built on their predecessors, as a result much of Jerusalem’s history is hidden.
This book tells the tale of a century and a half of people digging below Jerusalem to find what is hidden. While many of those who dug were reputable others had ulterior motives seeking either to prove their religious beliefs or their group’s claim to the city or sometimes seeking treasure.
They have and are being used to change the city and this book tells the history of their work and its impact on the citizens of the city. It is a fascinating tale.
A spellbinding history of the hidden world below the Holy City—a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers, and political upheaval
“A sweeping tale of archaeological exploits and their cultural and political consequences told with a historian’s penchant for detail and a journalist’s flair for narration.” —Washington Post
In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied…
My family lived in an American camp in Saudi Arabia when I was young, and we traveled extensively. I’ve always loved ancient cultures, from our first international trip to Greece when I was six. The two months I spent in Mexico and Central America as a young adult inspired my first novel for young people, The Well of Sacrifice. But Egypt has long held a special place in my heart. The mummies and pyramids grab a child’s attention. The fact that these people were so different from us – and yet so similar in other ways – keeps that fascination going. Stories about ancient Egypt never get old!
This photo-filled book was written by an Egyptian archaeologist who was the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The book discusses ancient and modern ideas of mummy curses. While Dr. Hawass sometimes feels the tug of ancient magic, he does a good job of refuting the idea of a curse. He shares many personal stories from his years as an archaeologist. His passion and enthusiasm for archaeology shine through.
The author also wrote Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which has friendly, enthusiastic writing and nice photos in a large format.
"Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: National Geographic (May 1, 2004) ISBN: 079226665X Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 9.6 x 0.6 inches All Ages ""Why do [people] want to believe that the ancient Egyptians wish to reach out over thousands of years an"
As an Indigenous person, I have a lived experience of the negative impacts of an erased history on all people. Students I teach are shocked to hear that Indigenous people have been in the Americas for over 60,000 years. The violence against archaeologists publishing on older than Clovis sites in the Americas is intense; that got me asking why? I sought the truth about the evidence for Pleistocene age archaeology sites in the Americas. Global human migrations attest to the fact that humans have been migrating great distances for over 2 million years. Reclaiming and rewriting Indigenous history is one path of many, leading to healing and reconciliation.
Adovasio & Pedler present evidence on pre-Clovis sites in both North and South America in a beautifully illustrated book. Presenting credible evidence for archaeological sites in the Americas dating to 19,00 years ago and possibly as early as 38,000 years ago. The discussion of each site is accompanied by photographs, maps, and diagrams. The authors discuss what they consider legitimate and illegitimate pre-Clovis archaeological sites in a book that is accessible to non-archaeologists.
Where did Native Americans come from and when did they first arrive? Several lines of evidence, most recently genetic, have firmly established that all Native American populations originated in eastern Siberia. For many years, the accepted version of New World prehistory held that people arrived in the Western Hemisphere around 13,000 years ago. This consensus, called 'Clovis First', has been increasingly challenged by discoveries at numerous archaeological sites throughout North and South America and is now widely considered to be outdated. The latest findings have convinced most archaeologists that people came to the Western Hemisphere thousands of years prior to…
