Israel Now: Portrait Of A Troubled Land

Israel: an embattled country, born out of struggle and fighting desperately tit survive in the most volatile region of the world today Americans are influenced daily in foreign affairs by our relationship with Israel and its critical role in the Middle East, yet malty Americans are curiously uninformed • about the nature of that nation and its people. Lawrence Meyer, one of our leading journalists, has written an incisive, readable portrait of Israel—the people, the country, and its institutions—and the crises confronting Israel today both from within and without. Investigating the political system, the army, the race problems, the Arabs, religion, and the economy, Lawrence Meyer offers perceptive analysis of the modern state. Frommaking the desert bloom to developing a sophisticated industrialized economy capable of producing jet aircraft, Israel's economic achievements have been spectacular. 'It yet, as the author point out, Israel today is a country saddled with staggering security costs, a huge foreign debt, and raging inflation. Through anecdotes, stories of daily life, and conversations with people in the street as well as with leading statesmen and intellectuals, the book brings the Israelis to life: a warm, generous, complex people—fatalistic and their future, cynical about their institutions, but courageous and determined to survive. Not since Hedrick Smith's The Russians has there been a more lively, informative, and insightful portrait of a country so important to America and Americans. Israel Now is a book that will be widely read and talked about for years.