Today, the term "natural reserve" is common in Israel. However, this wasn’t the case during the first years of its existence. A majority of the planning authorities did not understand what natural reserves were and why they were required, and the Hebrew language did not yet have a term for them. A small group of nature lovers struggled to preserve nature, leading battels, some of which continue to this day. The results of some of the successful battles can be seen across Israel today – in natural reserves, national parks and fields of wildflowers. The history of these battles is brought forth in this book by Dr. Uzi Paz, one of the pioneers of nature preservation in Israel. He also unfolds the changes formed in the country's landscape, flora and fauna, from ancient times to this day. The book contains a wealth of photographs taken by the author.

How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God’s promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history’s last generation. But in history’s eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

In the late fifteenth century, many of the Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Morocco and established a dynamic community in Fez. A number of Jewish families became prominent in commerce and public life there. Among the Jews of Fez of Hispanic origin was Samuel Pallache (circa 1550-1616), who served the Moroccan sultan as a commercial and diplomatic agent in Holland until Pallache's death in 1616. In Samuel Pallache , his world is viewed as a microcosm of early modern society, one far more interconnected, cosmopolitan, and fluid than is often portrayed. Pallache's missions and misadventures took him from Islamic Fez and Catholic Spain to Protestant England and Holland. Through these travels, the authors explore the workings of the Moroccan sultanate and the Spanish court, the Jewish communities of Fez and Amsterdam, and details of the Atlantic-Mediterranean trade. At once a sweeping view of two continents, three faiths, and five nation-states and an intimate story of one man's remarkable life, Samuel Pallache is history at its most compelling.

The book describes the Copernican Revolution, initiated by the publication of On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus until it was accepted by the Scientific Community. The book follows the dramatic turns of the plot of the struggle for scientific truth, along with the conflict between the church and Galileo. Finally, the book brings the modern proofs for the Copernican model, including the very recent discoveries of extra-solar planets.

The 33 essays in this book, most of which were published during 1965-1970 in La Stampa , are the diary Natalia Ginzburg never wrote. The essays depict everyday life, its randomness and chaos. Through them she discusses her own self, her literary passions, the thoughts she has while listening to music, watching an opera or a comedy, reading a book or newspaper, or while observing her children and grandchildren. She touches upon subjects like the loneliness of childhood, the dreariness of old age, the belief and disbelief in god. These essays portray an extraordinary portrait of the author as shy, quiet and fragile, but also as determined and aware of the significance of words. Mai devi domandarmi expresses the unique literary quality in Ginzburg's writing, which oscillates between autobiographical and testimonial.

By 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that was itself destroying Europe. In the German government a small group of men had a brilliant idea: why not sow further confusion in an increasingly chaotic Russia by arranging for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the most notorious of revolutionary extremists, currently safely bottled up in neutral Switzerland, to go home? Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train recreates Lenin's extraordinary journey from harmless exile in Zürich, across a Germany falling to pieces from the war's deprivations, and northwards to the edge of Lapland to his eventual ecstatic reception by the revolutionary crowds at Petrograd's Finland Station. With great skill and insight Merridale weaves the story of the train and its uniquely strange group of passengers with a gripping account of the now half-forgotten liberal Russian revolution and shows how these events intersected. She brilliantly uses a huge range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years. Many thought he was a mere 'useful idiot', others thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, others that Lenin had in practice few followers and even less influence. They would all prove to be quite wrong.

The book examines the relations between Oriental, local Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. It focuses on the role of Oriental Jews as possible mediators from a cultural, political and social perspective, as those who sought to bridge Jewish-Arab culture, Jewish-Arab nationalism, and Jewish-Arab identity. Examining these relations from the perspective of Oriental and local Jews sheds new light on the history and historiography of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Was Niccolò Machiavelli really the cynical schemer of legend - or was he a profound ethical thinker, who tried to save the democratic freedom of Renaissance Florence as it was threatened by ruthless dynasties? This revelatory biography shows us a man of fox-like dissimulation: a master of disguise in dangerous times.

The Western Wall—Judaism’s holiest site—occupies a prominent position in contemporary Jewish and Israeli discourse, current events, and local politics. In Holiness in the Eye of the Storm: The Judaism and Israeliness of the Western Wall, 1967–2000 , Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Doron Bar offer a detailed exploration of the Western Wall plaza’s evolution in the late twentieth century. The examination covers the role of archaeology, attempts to design the space, the Wall’s transformation as an Israeli and Jewish symbol, and the movement to open it to a variety of Jewish denominations, studying the central processes and shifts that took place at the Western Wall during the three decades that followed the Six-Day War, a relatively short yet crucial chapter in Jerusalem's extensive history.

In 2000, the book The Incense Trade Route 2000 was published. Since then, many changes occurred in the terrain, knowledge, research and the geo-political situation, in light of the peace treaties between Israel and other counties in the Middle East. The most prominent researchers of the Incense Trade Route have come together to write a new and updated edition.

Zionists without Borders tells the story of the Halutz movement in Poland and its role in helping the Labor movement rise to the leadership of the Zionist Movement in the interwar period. It describes the founding of a mass national and socialist movement, which changed the face of the Zionist map. The leaders of the Labor movement in Israel established strong ties with pioneers from Poland, thus making the Halutz a cross-border movement, connecting Jews by means of politics, nationalism and socialism.

The book The State of Israel and Its Institutions in the Halachic Thought of Rabbi Shlomo Goren reviews the diverse subjects with which Rabbi Goren dealt as a halakhic ruler: the halakhic status of the State of Israel, the concept of sovereignty, military and war laws, immigration absorption, changes in prayer and blessings, and others. The book describes his original, and sometimes unusual, positions within the history of Israel, and his desire to take part in shaping this history.