100 books like Reclamation

A veritable tome documenting the entire history of Middle East peace negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, including Syria, by Dennis Ross, the envoy who was on the inside throughout. Important revelations and insights emerge from the pages of this in-depth narrative of these torturous negotiations. It debunks the myth that no solutions had been or can be found. But despite agreements on all sides, one party or the other usually walked away. Because of my work in Israel, Jordan, Oman, Syria, and the Emirates, I found this book to be particularly valuable. And, now that I’ve come to know Dennis Ross personally, I value his contributions even more. 

I was blown away by this narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian perspective. Sari Nusseibeh is the scion of one of the oldest and most distinguished Palestinian families. So important are they that the Nusseibehs hold the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and are charged with opening the Church each day. Despite the fact that Sari and his family lost so much when Israel declared statehood in 1948, I was moved by the absence of malice in what I found to be a balanced account of “the Nakbah.” After reading the book, I was eager to meet Sari, who was at the time president of Al Quds University. My husband and I did get to spend a day with him on campus, where we learned even more about the Palestinian side of the conflict.

Frontline Syria serves as an “after-action report” of a highly complex conflict. I’ve known the author, David Phillips, since he was a teenager. He grew up to be a prominent diplomat and human rights activist and we worked together for a time. His book analyzes the U.S. response to the Syrian civil war and the proxy war that it is. Frontline Syria is erudite, deep, thorough, comprehensive, and accurately reflects what I’ve come to know about the Syrian crisis in my own work. The timeline at the front is a useful tool for following the myriad events that follow. Other tools include glossaries of acronyms and personalities. 

This is the best book I’ve ever read on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Goodman does a deep dive into why both Israelis and Palestinians are locked into their positions. He posits that the conflict may be irreconcilable. However, just because the conflict can’t be resolved doesn’t mean that it can’t be shrunk—and ways to shrink the conflict are the focus of his book. He makes numerous practical, doable policy recommendations about how to make life better for Palestinians and how to live together despite differences that can’t be overcome. Ultimately, I found the book to be hopeful.

Chapman has been a theology professor and Islam specialist in the Middle East for many years.

He now resides in Cambridge, England, and has offered one of the best analyses of the current conflicts that don’t want to go away.

This book is unmatched for its clarity and willingness to call out countries—especially Israel—for astonishing human rights abuses. Few have the courage to do this, and Chapman does it with academic depth and conviction.

I bought Jeremy Bowen’s book by chance as I searched for books about the Middle East. I wanted something different from the traditional (and sometimes a bit difficult to read) academic nonfiction book. This book appealed to me because it was written in a journalistic style and because it was as much a book about recent history as one about Bowen’s own travels and encounters in the Middle East. Well, I was not disappointed.

I really enjoyed reading Bowen’s recollections of his time in the Middle East and critical reflections on great powers’ involvement there. That is a book I felt gave a good sense of how the West has mismanaged its policies in the region during the past fifty years. 

Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to Washington, broke new ground with this account of the 1967 Six-Day War that transformed Israel, the Palestinian national movement, and the Middle East. Drawing on previously inaccessible documents in Israeli and Arab archives, Oren writes with a novelist’s eye for character, a diplomat’s appreciation of behind-the-scenes negotiations, and a historian’s judgment of human folly. The Six-Day War transformed Israel and the Jewish people in multiple ways – instilling self-confidence in Diaspora Jews, solidifying Israel’s permanence in the Middle East, and also burdening the Jewish state with seemingly insoluble political and moral dilemmas. This is the best book written about the war itself. 

While Ariel Sharon is the best-known Israeli armor commander, Bren Adan was probably the best. This book is his memoir of commanding one of the most important—and most successful—Israeli armored divisions during the 1973 October War (the Yom Kippur or Ramadan war). It is an outstanding first-hand account of armored combat in the Sinai in the late 20th Century by one of its finest practitioners. Adan’s book is also distinguished by his ruthless honesty in pointing out his own mistakes as well as those of the larger Israel Defense Forces. As one of my mentors once put it to me, ‘everything I know about commanding an armored division I learned from Adan’s book.’

The late Fred Halliday addressed in his book the most circulated myths of the Middle East and its people. It is an easy read and it sets straight many of the daily myths that we have picked up from western popular culture (mainly Hollywood) and Anglo-American media representation including news on the culture and religion of the people of the Middle East. 

Louis’s excellent, and now classic work, should play a far larger role in discussions of the meanings of imperialism and anti-imperialism than has been the case in recent years. Drawing on a deep grasp of British foreign policy and domestic politics, Louis examines what he calls the “grand strategy of non-intervention and conciliation” that leaned heavily towards the existing Arab regimes. Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and especially Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, and other leading officials in the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office, believed that a Jewish state in Palestine would antagonize the Arabs and lead to a decline in British influence in the Middle East. Louis draws attention to Richard Crossman and other British critics of the policy of preserving Britain’s imperial role in Palestine. It is one of those indispensable works of scholarship regarding these events.