This is an interesting and engaging book on the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The author provides the history of the settlement of Israel in part through his family’s own experience as immigrants to the region, and through other personal vignettes. What emerges is a history that demonstrates how the sweep of events created a situation that now seems so intractable. This is a fair book that does not hew to any particular political point of view. I will be taking students to the Middle East in December and this book is assigned summer reading. I’m not alone in recommending it. Both The New York Times and The Economist picked it as one of the best books of the year when it was published in 2013.