Dying for Jerusalem: The Past, Present and Future of the Holiest City

by Walter Laqueur

The Past, Present and Future of the Holiest City
Why has a symbol become such a tremendous political issue? Whence the insistence on the part of the religious nationalists on keeping Jerusalem as the permanent and exclusive capital? And why the insistence by Palestinians on having it as their capital, which it never was in the past?
Why are people who do not want to live in Jerusalem willing to die for it?
Praise for Walter Laquer from the New York Times:
"Among the last of a remarkable generation of German Jewish intellectuals, Walter Laquer has seen and survived much of this century's agitated history. He has also written cogently, even preciently, about it for more than 40 years."
(Review of Facism: Past, Present, Future)
"Walter Laquer--a deeply learned polygot historian, whose expertise ranges from 19th-century Germany to 20th-century Egypt--has for decades stood out as one of the very few sober and intelligent voices in this undistinguised crowd."
(Review of No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century)
"One of our most distinguished scholars of modern European history."
(Review of Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia)

Genres: Nonfiction, History

345 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2006

About the author

Walter Ze'ev Laqueur was an American historian, journalist and political commentator. Laqueur was born in Breslau, Lower Silesia, Prussia (modern Wrocław, Poland), into a Jewish family. In 1938, he left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust.

Laqueur lived in Israel from 1938 to 1953. After one year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he joined a Kibbutz and worked as an agricultural laborer from 1939 to 1944. In 1944, he moved to Jerusalem, where he worked as a journalist until 1953, covering Palestine and other countries in the Middle East.

Since 1955 Laqueur has lived in London. He was founder and editor, with George Mosse, of the Journal of Contemporary History and of Survey from 1956 to 1964. He was also founding editor of The Washington Papers. He was Director of the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library in London from 1965 to 1994. From 1969 he was a member, and later Chairman (until 2000), of the International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington. He was Professor of the History of Ideas at Brandeis University from 1968 to 1972, and University Professor at Georgetown University from 1976 to 1988. He has also been a visiting professor of history and government at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Tel Aviv University and Johns Hopkins University.

Laqueur's main works deal with European history in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Russian history and German history, as well as the history of the Middle East. The topics he has written about include the German Youth Movement, Zionism, Israeli history, the cultural history of the Weimar Republic and Russia, Communism, the Holocaust, fascism, and the diplomatic history of the Cold War. His books have been translated into many languages, and he was one of the founders of the study of political violence, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. His comments on international affairs have appeared in many American and European newspapers and periodicals.

(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book to read on something what the title says. But that was just a part of the book. Most of the book is history of Jerusalem and its surroundings from the late 19th century, including the author's own memoirs in the places.

For people like me, who do not know certain inside histories of specific things this was a decent book, superficially.

The topics dealt herein were: War of the Archaeologists; Post-Zionists and Post-Modernist ideas; the Kibbutz as a Utopia; the Sephardi Aristocracy in Israel; the German Jews; on the Hebrew University; on the founding of the Yad Vashem; the Arab-Jewish Conflict; Political ideas regarding a Binational State; the Haredim; the Moroccon Jews and their state of affairs after their immigration; Jewish Communists; the Russian Repatriants; and something called as the Jerusalem Syndrome (the crazy feeling of being connected to Jerusalem in some way or the other).

This was good information for me considering my low historical/current affairs knowledge of the topics mentioned above.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basic idea of this book is to introduce to the reader several key figures living in or somehow involved with the modern history of Jerusalem. I enjoyed the real life memoirs of the author sprinkled with history, and I learned a lot about Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, and Judaism.

This is not a straight history book, nor is it a straight biography type book. It's also not filled with opinion. It was not what I expected based on the title, but I was pleasantly surprised at what it turned out to be about.