A grand human story -- Poetry and politics : the Jewish nation seeks a home -- Some spot of a native land -- A conversation, not an ideology : Zionist divisions at the turn of the century -- From a dream to glimmers of reality -- The Balfour Declaration : the empire endorses the state -- Nowhere to go, even if they could leave -- The Yishuv resists the British, the Arabs battle partition -- Independence : the state is born -- From dreams of a state to the reality of statehood -- Israel enters the international arena -- Israel confronts the Holocaust -- Six days of war change a country forever -- The burden of occupation -- Yom Kippur War : the "conception" crashes -- Revolution within the revolution : the rise and revenge of Israel's political right -- Taking a page from the Zionists : the rise of Palestinian nationalism -- The peace process stalls -- A Jewish renaissance in the Jewish state -- A century after Balfour-- "A national home for the Jewish people" -- Appendix A. Glossary of people mentioned -- Appendix B. Glossary of non-English terms -- Appendix C. Israel's Declaration of Independence -- Appendix D. Israeli prime ministers and the American and Israeli presidents with whom they worked -- Appendix E. Israeli political parties and their changing balance of power.

Presenting a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic and political history of the state of Israel, a public intellectual sheds light on the past of this complex nation, one rife with conflict, so that readers can understand its future.