Leslie Stein, recent­ly retired as a pro­fes­sor at Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty in Aus­tralia, has writ­ten an impres­sive tril­o­gy that chron­i­cles the his­to­ry of Israel. In this final vol­ume in the series, Stein exam­ines Israel’s mil­i­tary engage­ments, but does not stop there: he pro­vides an in-depth pic­ture of the country’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and an analy­sis of the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO) and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty. He con­sid­ers the influ­ence of Israeli Arabs as well as the set­tle­ments in the West Bank and Gaza, the ultra-Ortho­dox, and oth­er rad­i­cal Jew­ish move­ments. He also dis­cuss­es the immi­grants from Rus­sia and Ethiopia and their quests to fit into Israeli soci­ety. This is a clear­ly writ­ten, objec­tive look at Israel today in all of its com­plex­i­ty and diver­si­ty. Any­one inter­est­ed in mod­ern his­to­ry will learn a great deal by read­ing it.

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