Archives de catégorie : Current Issues

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK de Doron Spielman

This is the untold story of the rediscovery of the ancient City of David in Jerusalem and the powerful evidence that proves the Jewish people’s historical and indigenous connection to the Holy Land.

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK:
The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You To Know
by
Doron Spielman
Center Street, May 2025
(via Javelin)

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish people have faced nine wars against multiple enemies. Yet, beyond the physical conflicts, a deeper ideological battle has been waged against Israel and the Jewish people. This war, crafted by certain Arab leaders and echoed by international organizations like the United Nations, seeks to erase the Jewish people’s ancestral ties to the land, casting them as outsiders, imposters, and “settlers.”

One thing, however, stands in the way of the denialists: the 3,800-year history of the City of David, a site lying just south of the Old City. Archeologists at the site are unearthing evidence that proves the Jewish people’s origin story in the land for over three millennia. Every shovel of dirt reveals that while others may claim to be indigenous to Jerusalem, the Jewish people are, in fact, more indigenous to the Land of Israel than perhaps any other group living anywhere in the world.

This is the timely story of those who transformed City of David from a neglected hilltop village into one of the most important archeological heritage sites in the world, while facing powerful global institutions and terror groups that would do almost anything to keep this truth hidden. Highly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book foreshadows the events and historical denialism that unfolded with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Born and educated in the United States, Doron Spielman moved to Israel in 2000, where he serves as an international spokesperson in the Israel Defense Forces Reserves with the rank of Major. For over two decades, he has worked to transform the City of David into one of the world’s most significant archaeological and historical sites. He is a graduate of the Churchill National Security Program, a Senior Fellow at the Herut Center in Jerusalem, and a graduate of the University of Michigan.

THE TRIANGLE OF POWER d’Alexander Stubb

At the end of the Cold War, we in the West assumed that our values were destined to become universal. Instead, they are in danger.

THE TRIANGLE OF POWER:
Rebalancing the New World Order
by Alexander Stubb
on submission, Spring 2026
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

The forces that were supposed to bring us together—open trade, technology, information, and global financial markets—can also pull us apart. Economic interdependence does not guarantee peace. Liberal democracy is not a universal desire.

The Global West, until now led by the United States, wants to maintain the old liberal international order. The Global East, led by China, wants to change it. But the balance of power is no longer bi-polar. The ascendence of the Global South – led by a range of states from Asia, Africa, and Latin America – has created a Triangle of Power.

The Global South has the power to tip the new world order toward West or East, democracy or autocracy, free trade or state control, shared rules or none. The next few years will decide the dynamics of the new international order for the rest of the century, or at least for decades to come.

This is the 1918-, 1945- or 1989 moment of our generation. What’s certain is that the world order as we know it will be reborn. The question is what kind of order it will be—and where the values of freedom and democracy will stand within it.

In THE TRIANGLE OF POWER, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb argues that the West can only maintain its central role—and preserve the liberal world order—by adopting an approach he calls “values-based realism” in dealing with other countries and with the key challenges of our time economic, climate, and technology.

Alexander Stubb is the 13th President of the Republic of Finland, inaugurated on 1 March 2024. He has previously served as Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade and Europe Minister of Finland (2008-2016). He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2008 and national parliament (2011-2017). He was the Chairman of the Finnish National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) from 2014 to 2016 and Vice President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) from 2017 to 2020. Stubb worked as a civil servant from 1995 to 2004 as an advisor at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Helsinki and Brussels and in President Romano Prodi’s team at the European Commission. He was involved in the negotiations of the EU Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon.

KINGDOM OF FEAR d’Anuj Chopra

A riveting portrait of Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman and the untold stories of those living under the influence of the millennial dictator’s rule, for readers of Barbara Demick and Svetlana Alexievich.

KINGDOM OF FEAR:
A millennial dictator rises from the shadows, unmaking and remaking Saudi Arabia
by Anuj Chopra
Granta, Late 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In incisive, deeply-reported prose, KINGDOM OF FEAR introduces us to ten indelible characters, from a monied rival to a flashy aide, and from a defiant female activist to an outspoken dissident. Through their carefully unfolded stories, we come to understand them not only as individuals but also as representatives of different strata of Saudi society, layers that have been, as Anuj says, “upended, uprooted, or uplifted” by dramatic changes under MBS.

Along the way, Anuj himself becomes an eleventh character. His on-the-ground reporting grants us an intimate view of a country in turmoil, one that can often seem opaque to the outside world. And through the eyes of a reporter fighting for his sources and their stories, we witness the terrifying impact of a growing culture of fear, one that seeks to silence and oppress. But as Anuj reminds us, silence, too, can speak volumes, and he thoughtfully unpacks those weighted moments, bringing clarity to darkness.

In shifting the focus to those impacted by MBS, Anuj pulls our attention away from the Crown Prince himself, spotlighting and empowering Saudi citizens in order to better understand them and their nation in all their complexity. KINGDOM OF FEAR is a powerful, necessary exploration of Saudi Arabia as it exists today, and how to grapple with the fear that undergirds MBS’s rule.

Anuj Chopra is a Washington D.C.-based reporter for Agence France-Presse (AFP). He was the 2022 Knight-Bagehot Fellow and Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia Journalism School in New York, and has won several prizes for his work, including the CNN Young Journalist Award, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, the Human Rights Press Award and the Ramnath Goenka prize for excellence in journalism. He covered Saudi Arabia and Yemen for four years (2017-21) as AFP’s Riyadh bureau chief. Anuj has also written from hotspots around Asia and the Middle East for international publications such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, TIME, The Economist, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post.

KAPUT de Wolfgang Münchau

The story of the rise and decline of a huge industrial giant, and of how and why it happened.

KAPUT:
The End of the German Miracle
by Wolfgang Münchau
Swift Press UK, November 2024
(via Randle Editorial & Literary)

Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. Angela Merkel was widely seen as the true ‘leader of the free world’, and Germany’s export-driven economic model seemed to deliver prosperity. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.

In KAPUT, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany’s economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The neo-mercantilist policies of the German state, driven by close connections between the country’s industrial and political elite, have left Germany technologically behind over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China – and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the 21st century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe’s biggest economy.

Wolfgang Münchau is a journalist and commentator who focuses on the European economy and the European Union. He is director of leading news service Eurointelligence and a columnist for the New Statesman.

DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE de Barbara Demick

The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy.

DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE:
From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
by Barbara Demick
Penguin Random House, May 2025
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

On a warm day in September 2000, a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut nestled in bamboo behind her brother’s rural home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her young family but also not her first children. Hidden in the hut, they were born under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy. Fearing the ire of family planning officials, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in late 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away from her aunt’s care. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn’t imagine she could be sent to the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world.

Following her stories written as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick, author of National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy, embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long term impact of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther—formerly Fangfang—is a photographer in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, having no idea that she was kidnapped. Through Demick’s indefatigable reporting and the activist work to find these lost children, will these two long-lost sisters finally find each other, and if they do, will they feel whole again?

A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.

Barbara Demick is author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea; Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, and Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, published by Random House in July 2020. She was bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul, and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer.