Pro­fuse­ly illus­trat­ed with images, maps, tables, graphs, and side­bars, Israel: An Intro­duc­tion is an unusu­al­ly wide rang­ing overview of what makes Israel, Israel. The book cov­ers Israel’s his­to­ry as only one of many chap­ters, which include the land, peo­ple, soci­ety, gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics, and eco­nom­ics, writ­ten by experts in each area. The sec­tion enti­tled Cul­ture dis­cuss­es a broad range of arts and activ­i­ties — dance, lit­er­a­ture, poet­ry, food, the­ater, film art, media, and sports.

Rubin’s goal in this book is to show­case the dynam­ic devel­op­ment of Israel and Israeli soci­ety in order to demon­strate that, con­trary to pre­vail­ing media cov­er­age, Israel is about much more than sim­ply war and con­flict, and that there have been and will con­tin­ue to be great con­tri­bu­tions from Israel. That aim could only be accom­plished by tak­ing the book out of the polemics of his­to­ry and prov­ing that Israel has val­ue in these oth­er realms, as well.