Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular cultureshopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitschhe puts forward his controversial view that the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism.

As the Middle East conflict enters its most violent phase, Tom Segev offers a lively, contentious polemic against cherished and rigid notions of Israel's national unity and culture. In his many works of history, Tom Segev has challenged the entrenched understanding of crucial moments in Israel's past. Now, in a short, sharp, polemical book, Segev has turned his sights from Israeli history to confront some revered assumptions about the country today. Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular culture -- shopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitsch -- Segev offers a controversial point of view: the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism. And, in the fierce battle over the future of Zionism, Segev welcomes the diffusion of national identity and ideology that has taken place in the last decade as a harbinger of a new spirit of compromise and openness. At a time of crisis, as Israelis and Palestinians retreat to their most embattled positions, Segev's colorful, provocative book is sure to spark heated debate. " ... this slender book will be indispensable to anyone trying to understand current events in Israel and the Middle East." - Publishers Weekly

It may sound crazy, but Elvis Presley - that god-fearing, gospel-singing American pop icon - was a Jew; these maverick journalists and filmmakers have proven it. A behind-the-scenes account of their irreverent and witty film documentary, in which Wallace and Goldstein took a Hasidic Jewish Elvis impersonator and an Orthodox Rabbi on a trek to trace Elvis's roots all the way to Israel and then bring the good news home to Graceland, this book compiles production logs, selections from the script, trivia and the investigator's official report on Elvis's roots.

It was the first (and last) season of professional baseball in Israel. Aaron Pribble, twenty-seven, had been out of Minor League Baseball for three years while he pursued a career in education when, at his coach's suggestion, he tried out for the newly formed Israel Baseball League (IBL). Of Jewish descent (not a requirement, but definitely a plus) and former pro, Pribble was the ideal candidate for the upstart league. In many ways the league resembled the ultimate baseball fantasy camp with its unforgettable cast of characters: the DJ/street artist third baseman from the Bronx, the wildman catcher from Australia, the journeymen Dominicans who were much older than they claimed to be, and, of course, seventy-one-year-old Sandy Koufax, drafted in a symbolic gesture as the last player. After falling in love with a beautiful Yemenite Jew, enduring an alleged terrorist attack on opening day, witnessing a career-ending brain injury caused by improper field equipment, participating in a strike, and venturing into the West Bank despite being strongly advised against it, Pribble must decide whether to forgo a teaching career in order to become the first player from the IBL to sign a pro contract in the United States. His is a story of coming of age spiritually and athletically in one short season in the throes of romance, Middle Eastern politics, and the dreams of America's pastime far, far afield from home.

Examines the changing meanings Americans invested in their country's intensifying relationship with Israel from the 1950s to the 1980s.

This book looks at the post-Holocaust experience with emphasis on aspects of its impact on popular culture.

Understanding Israel/Palestine contains a historic review of the conflict, an assessment of competing intellectual and political frameworks (Israeli self-defense, genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing) for understanding it, and a moral argument in favor of human rights as the basis for resolving it.