Featuring Zeynep Pamuk on building science back better, and Michael Harris on human understanding in the age of AI.Also in this issue:Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on a Brazilian strategy for holding Trump to accountLorna Finlayson on Habermas and the fate of critical theoryOmer Bartov talks with Arnon Grunberg about Israel’s paranoid memory politicsYarimar ...

**FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2026'Remarkable' GUARDIAN**'Anyone disturbed and frightened by our current moral and intellectual morass should read it' PANKAJ MISHRAA leading genocide scholar explores the history of Zionism, Israel’s lurch towards extreme oppression and violence, and why it stands accused of crimes against humanityProfessor Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv and ser...

A leading Israeli American scholar of the Holocaust explores and explains his native country's intensifying turn toward violence and exclusion.The distinguished historian Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the German army and the Holocaust, before turning his attention to his native country.In Israel: What Went Wrong?, B...

"Anyone who studies nationalism, genocide, mass violence, or war in these regions, from the Enlightenment through the mid-20th century, needs to read [this]."— Central European HistoryShatterzone of Empires is a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries.In this vast territory, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethn...

**The story of the diverse communities of Eastern Europe’s borderlands in the centuries prior to World War II“A powerful combination of history and personal memoir . . . A richly contextual, skillfully woven historical study.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)**Focusing on the former province of Galicia, this book tells the story of Europe’s eastern borderlands, stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans, through the eyes of the diverse communities of migrants who set...

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly irreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region that is now known as Israel and Palestine and its peoples—both those that live there as well as those who relate to it as a mental, mythical, or religious landscape. Engaging the perspectives of a multi...

A 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThis book discusses some of the most urgent current debates over the study, commemoration, and politicization of the Holocaust through key critical perspectives. Omer Bartov adeptly assesses the tensions between Holocaust and genocide studies, which have repeatedly both enriched and clashed with each other, whilst convincingly arguing for the importance of local history and individual testimony in grasping the nature of mass ...

The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust collects narratives of Bulgarian Jews who survived the Holocaust. Through the analysis of eye-witness testimonies, archival documents, photographs, and researchers’ investigations, the authors weave a complex tapestry of voices that were previously underrepresented, ignored, and denied. Taken together, the collected memories offer an alternative perspective that counters official accounts and corroborates war crimes.

Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Book Prize for Holocaust Research“A substantive contribution to the history of ethnic strife and extreme violence” (The Wall Street Journal) and a cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and family against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II.For more than four hundr...

In Erased, Omer Bartov uncovers the rapidly disappearing vestiges of the Jews of western Ukraine, who were rounded up and murdered by the Nazis during World War II with help from the local populace. What begins as a deeply personal chronicle of the Holocaust in his mother's hometown of Buchach--in former Eastern Galicia--carries him on a journey across the region and back through history. This poignant travelogue reveals the complete erasure of the Jews and their removal from publ...

Mirrors of Destruction examines the relationship between total war, state-organized genocide, and the emergence of modern identity. Here, Omer Bartov demonstrates that in the twentieth century there have been intimate links between military conflict, mass murder of civilian populations, and the definition and categorization of groups and individuals. These connections were most clearly manifested in the Holocaust, as the Nazis attempted to exterminate European Jewry under cover of...

War endlessly tries to mask itself. The myth of the heroic soldier testing his individual courage stands in stark contrast to the reality of mass, anonymous death and the suppression of individual actions. Murder in Our Midst shows that this fundamental tension reached its natural conclusion in the Holocaust, and that disguising it has required an ongoing effort to misrepresent war and the Holocaust as something other than industrial killing. Examining a broad range of the represe...