Reviews : Crossing Mandelbaum Gate : Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978
Early Blurbs for Crossing Mandelbaum Gate
Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978
Pulitzer Prize-winner Kai Bird's vivid memoir of an American childhood spent in the midst of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Jerusalem, Beirut, Cairo and Saudia Arabia.
"I was entranced by this book from the first page to the last, and can recommend it with enthusiasm."
Sir Martin Gilbert, is the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill and author of Israel: A History, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century and The Holocaust.
"Kai Bird has done the impossible, and written a wholly original book challenging both the conventional and unconventional wisdom about Israel, the Jews and the Middle East."
Victor S. Navasky, Editor Emeritus of The Nation, and author of Naming Names and A Matter of Opinion.
"Kai Bird has stepped back from the dreaded Middle Eastern present to create a spellbinding portrait of an earlier time. He grew up on the seam between Arabs and Israelis, an American in the heyday of American innocence and power. He has not adorned that past, for he was there when the region’s current ordeal was hatched, but he has given a bittersweet rendition of a world now irretrievably gone. A beautiful memoir, and a supremely honest one."
Professor Fouad Ajami, author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs
"A wonderfully intimate account, which reminds us that the path to peace passes through the gate of personal narrative. We need not agree with Bird’s analysis to be moved by his story and allow it to help us walk through that gate."
- Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Wrong for Me To Be Right: Finding Faith In Our Differences. He is also president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and a popular commentator on religion and society. He is the cohost of the weekly radio show Hirschfield and Kula, and creator and host of the television series Building Bridges: Abrahamic Perspectives on the World Today. Named one of the Top 50 Rabbis in America in Newsweek magazine and one of the nation’s leading preachers and teachers by Beliefnet.com.