Israel at 61 is a pros­per­ous, mod­ern democ­ra­cy, but its begin­nings and its sur­vival seemed high­ly unlike­ly in 1948. Leslie Stein’s his­to­ry of the country’s first 19 years explains how the foun­da­tions were laid. Stein, a senior research fel­low at Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, while sym­pa­thet­ic to Israel, strives for bal­ance in this work. He does not shy away from the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the country’s cre­ation. When dis­cussing the War of Inde­pen­dence, he refutes those who main­tain that the expul­sion of the Pales­tini­ans was part of a mas­ter plan for eth­nic cleans­ing. He also dis­cuss­es the dif­fi­cul­ties that the young coun­try faced, with the rapid absorp­tion of immi­grants from all over the world and the result­ing cul­tur­al con­flicts and prej­u­dices. This book is an excel­lent account of mod­ern nation-build­ing and the polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al strug­gles involved.