The Balfour Declaration

Resumen del libro

Winner of the 2010 National Jewish Book Award, this is a revelatory history of a document that laid the foundation stone of the state of Israel, the reverberations of which continue to be felt to this day.

Born in the furnace of shifting great-power alliances, the Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917, was a defining moment in world history. In paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel, it fundamentally reshaped the Middle East and yielded repercussions that we are still feeling, powerfully, today. Jonathan Schneer has written a sweeping, deeply researched, and provocative history of this crucial document and the politics, double-dealing, backstabbing, and geopolitical crises that led to it. The result shows us the evolution of a fraught region in a wholly original and unbiased light.

JONATHAN SCHNEER, a specialist in modern British history, is a professor at Georgia Tech's School of History, Technology, and Society. He is the author of five additional books, as well as numerous articles and reviews. A fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1985-86, he has also held research fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the UK, as well as at the Erich Remarque Center of New York University. He was a founding editor of Radical History Review and is a member of the editorial board of the London Journal.