Envoy of Jerusalem

Envoy of Jerusalem
Author: Helena P. Schrader
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2016-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 162787397X

Balian has survived the devastating defeat of the Christian army on the Horns of Hattin, and walked away a free man after the surrender of Jerusalem, but he is baron of nothing in a kingdom that no longer exists. Haunted by the tens of thousands of Christians now enslaved by the Saracens, he is determined to regain what has been lost. The arrival of a vast crusading army under the soon-to-be-legendary Richard the Lionheart offers hope -- but also conflict, as natives and crusaders clash and French and English quarrel.

Defender of Jerusalem

Defender of Jerusalem
Author: Helena P. Schrader
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2015-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627872736

Balian d'Ibelin

Balian d'Ibelin
Author: Helena P. Schrader
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627878173

Book I in the Award-Winning Jerusalem Trilogy B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree, Historical Novel Society Editor's Choice Hollywood made him a blacksmith; Arab chronicles said he was "like a king." He served a leper, but defied Richard the Lionheart. He was a warrior and a diplomat both. This is the first book of a three-part biography of the historical Balian d'Ibelin.

Knight of Jerusalem

Knight of Jerusalem
Author: Helena P. Schrader
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627871942

Balian, the landless son of a local baron, goes to Jerusalem to seek his fortune. Instead, he finds himself trapped into serving the young prince suffering from leprosy, an apparent sentence to obscurity and death. But the unexpected death of King Amalric makes the leper boy King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, and Balian’s prospects begin to improve. The Byzantine princess Maria Comnena is just thirteen years old when she arrives in the Kingdom of Jerusalem at her great uncle’s orders to cement the alliance between the two Christian kingdoms in the East. The child wife of a man almost three times her own age, she is despite her excellent education and intelligence little more than a pretty doll in the eyes of her husband. When she fails to produce a male heir for the desperate king, her marriage becomes a gilded prison. Until suddenly the king is dead and Maria finds herself a wealthy widow at just twenty years of age. Meanwhile, the charismatic Kurdish leader Saladin has united the forces of Islam and vowed to drive the Christians into the sea. While King Baldwin IV—and Balian—struggle to save the Holy Land for Christendom by whatever means they can, the internal rivalries of Templars and Hospitallers, the advocates of offense and defense, and the bitter rivalries of barons threaten to tear the kingdom apart.

Envoy to Moscow

Envoy to Moscow
Author: Aryeh Levin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135241228

The personal memoir of Aryeh Levin, Israel's first Ambassador to Russia since the severance of relations between the two countries in 1967. Aryeh Levin's four-year tenure as Ambassador to Moscow coincided with great upheavals in the life and times of both Israel and Russia. He was witness to the momentous events that led to the collapse of the Soviet empire and was instrumental in facilitating the immigration of almost half a million Jews to Israel.

Moses

Moses
Author: Mosheh Likhṭenshṭain
Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781602800120

Let My People Know

Let My People Know
Author: Aryeh Lightstone
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1641772654

Aryeh Lightstone, former Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Special Envoy for the Abraham Accords, is uniquely poised to unravel the past, present, and, most importantly, the future of U.S. foreign policy with the Middle East. "A powerful affirmation of humanity’s capacity to achieve the extraordinary." —Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President, 2017-2021 "Aryeh demonstrates that faithful adherence to one’s core beliefs—in both his faith and his nation—are not only possible but necessary. Read and enjoy." —Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, 2018-2021 The Trump Administration's "Peace to Prosperity" vision for the Middle East was unveiled on January 28, 2020. What followed over the next eleven months, concluding with the signing of the Israel-Morocco normalization agreement was one of the most fascinating and consequential periods of U.S. foreign policy in a generation, leading to five normalization agreements between Israel and Muslim states. The Abraham Accords achieved what had seemed impossible for decades and set the Middle East on a trajectory toward a broad regional peace. Aryeh Lightstone is uniquely positioned to tell the story. As the senior advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, he was in the room for nearly every major discussion and decision involving Middle East policy. He was tasked with the most complex and sensitive component of the Abraham Accords: turning them into practical action and doing it quickly—during a pandemic, no less. In addition, he led the Abraham Accords Business Summit and the Abraham Fund, and served as the key contact between Israel and the other Accords nations. Let My People Know provides a behind-the-scenes account of the strategies that allowed the Abraham Accords to be struck, and an unvarnished look at the region's idiosyncrasies that factored into the process. A rabbi and an enthralling storyteller, Lightstone paints a vivid picture of the varied cultures and personalities involved. He also offers a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of an embassy. Finally, he explains what the Biden administration must do better to advance America's interests abroad. We now have a paradigm for a forward-looking Middle East policy that ultimately benefits the United States. Lightstone makes the case for strategic action to maintain the momentum.

Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer
Author: David Friedman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0063098121

The Trump administration’s peace agreements in the Middle East were the greatest foreign policy accomplishment in decades. Now, for the first time, his ambassador to Israel explains how they pulled it off. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. For decades, the U.S. State Department called it diplomacy. David Friedman was an outside candidate when President Trump appointed him U.S. ambassador to Israel. He took office to find U.S.-Israel policy stuck in stalemate. For years, accepted wisdom was that extensive experience and detailed knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture were necessary to negotiate treaties. In truth, Friedman realized, all parties played on that accepted wisdom to stall—expecting to get a better deal further down the road. Tossing the State Department playbook aside and incorporating insights from his many years as a negotiator in the American private sector, Friedman and a small team with no prior diplomatic experience revamped American diplomacy to project “peace through strength.” He emphasized the importance of leverage, the key to any good negotiation. After painstaking, behind-the-scenes work, the Abraham Accords were signed: a historic series of peace deals between Israel and the five Muslim nations. In Sledgehammer, Friedman tells the true story of how the Abraham Accords came about. He takes us from the Oval Office to the highest echelons of power in the Middle East, putting us at the table during the intense negotiations that led to this historic breakthrough. The inside story of arguably the greatest achievement of the Trump Administration, Sledgehammer is an important, inspiring account of the hard, hopeful work necessary to bring long overdue—and lasting—peace to one of the most turbulent and tragic regions of the globe.

Israel

Israel
Author: Noa Tishby
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982144955

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “fascinating and very moving” (Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The Social Network) chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most interesting countries in the world—Israel. Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. But “this is not your Bubbie’s history book” (Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher). Instead, offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her “passion, humor, and deep intimacy” (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel’s creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.

Master of the Game

Master of the Game
Author: Martin Indyk
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 689
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101947543

A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “A wealth of lessons for today, not only about the challenges in that region but also about the art of diplomacy . . . the drama, dazzling maneuvers, and grand strategic vision.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk—a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013—has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand. Now, in an attempt to understand the arc of American diplomatic influence in the Middle East, he returns to the origins of American-led peace efforts and to the man who created the Middle East peace process—Henry Kissinger. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk's own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiations. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk's account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger's design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace.