A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel Paperback by Gudrun Krämer (Author, Translator), Graham Harman (Translator) (Princeton University Press)

This is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies on this increasingly popular field, and the book will be of much use to those teaching classes on Middle Eastern history, the history of the Ottoman Empire and Israel Studies. It will also prove useful in seminars on the construction of historical narratives, the connection between religion and nationalism, and processes of decolonialization.Krämer's is a well-researched and thoroughly referenced work of synthesis offered by a cautious and reflective historian.  It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events--from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century--that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, A History of Palestine offers a richly detailed interpretation of this critical region's evolution. Starting with the prebiblical and biblical roots of Palestine, noted historian Gudrun Kramer examines the meanings ascribed to the land in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Paying special attention to social and economic factors, she examines the gradual transformation of Palestine, following the history of the region through the Egyptian occupation of the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman reform era, and the British Mandate up to the founding of Israel in 1948. Focusing on the interactions of Arabs and Jews, A History of Palestine tells how these connections affected the cultural and political evolution of each community and Palestine as a whole.

A History of Palestine is a respectable addition to the synthetic literature in the field. For the non-specialist reader, the book offers a good introduction to the social, political, cultural, and economic history of Palestine and a wealth of statistical information. For specialists, the book is a further reminder of the challenges posed by colonial history and to the importance, in the twenty-first century, of including the voices of the indigenous peoples as well as the colonists.

Gudrun Kramer is professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Her books include "A History of Islam" and "The Jews in Modern Egypt".