Old Wine, Broken Bottle PDF Download

Author: Norman G. Finkelstein
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1939293472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
My Promised Land by Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit has been one of the most widely discussed and lavishly praised books about Israel in recent years. It has garnered encomiums from a broad spectrum of influential voices, including Thomas Friedman, David Remnick, Jonathan Freedland, Jeffrey Goldberg, Franklin Foer, and Dwight Garner. Were he not already inured to the logrolling that passes for informed opinion on this topic, Norman Finkelstein might have been surprised, astonished even. That’s because, as he reveals with typical precision, My Promised Land is riddled with omission, distortion, falsehood, and sheer nonsense. In brief chapters that analyze Shavit’s defense of Zionism and Israel’s Jewish identity, its nuclear arsenal and its refusal to negotiate peace, Finkelstein shows how highly selective criticism and sanctimonious handwringing are deployed to create a paean to modern Israel more sophisticated than the traditional our-country-right-or-wrong. In this way, Shavit hopes to win back an American Jewish community increasingly alienated from a place it once regarded as home. However, because the myths he recycles have been so comprehensively shattered, this project is unlikely to succeed. Like his landmark debunking of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial, Finkelstein’s clinical dissection of My Promised Land will be welcomed by those who prefer truth to propaganda, and who yearn for a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict based on justice, rather than arguments framed by anguish and schmaltz.

Author: Benjamin Wallace
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307338789
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it. The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. “Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek

Author: Ari Shavit
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812984641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

Author: John Baker
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 1761043668
Category : Georgia (Republic)
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The adventure of a lifetime to buy Stalin's secret multimillion dollar wine cellar located in Georgia; it is the Raiders of the Lost Ark of wine. In the late 1990s, John Baker was known as a purveyor of quality rare and old wines. He was the perfect person for an occasional business partner to approach with a mysterious wine list that was different to anything John, or his second-in-command, Kevin Hopko, had ever come across. The list was discovered to be a comprehensive catalogue of the wine collection of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. The wine had become the property of the state after the Russian Revolution of 1918, during which Nicholas and his entire family were executed. Now owned by Stalin, the wine was discreetly removed to a remote Georgian winery when Stalin was concerned the advancing Nazi army might overrun Russia. Half a century later, the wine was rumoured to be hidden underground and off any known map. John and Kevin embarked on an audacious, colourful and potentially dangerous journey to Georgia to discover if the wines actually existed; if the bottles were authentic and whether the entire collection could be bought and transported to a major London auction house for sale. Stalin's Wine Cellar is a wild, sometimes rough ride through the glamorous world of high-end wine.

Author: Joan Peters
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780963624208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
This book is a study of the basic reasons for the Arab-Jewish feud and supports the author's thesis that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had lived in what became Israel in 1948 is not the reason for the conflict which has now been going on for years.

Author: Marnie Old
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0744057078
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 651

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Book Description
The ultimate course for wine lovers! Learn your sauvignon blanc from your chardonnay and your merlot from your grenache. Smell, swirl and taste your way to transforming from wine novice to expert. The pages of this wine book make a comprehensive, no-nonsense wine tasting course that covers every aspect of wine from grape to glass. Explore the nuances of your favorite red and white and discover new cultivars. Inside, you’ll find: • A dynamic course in understanding wine — through tasting and appreciation — with every subject given a high-impact visual treatment. • A structure that reflects how people approach wine — talking, tasting, and buying wine comes before exploring grape varieties and wine regions. • All key wine subjects are covered, shown and explained in an easy-to-understand way. • Themed tasting exercises are located throughout the book, encouraging readers to learn at their own pace. Follow expert wine advice in the latest edition of Wine: A Tasting Course. The updated text and refreshed design bring concepts to life like food and wine pairing, identifying the style spectrum, and distinguishing taste and smell. It explores fun wine facts and explodes myths, giving you everything you need to talk, taste and enjoy your favorite vintage. Can't smell honeysuckle in that glass of sauvignon blanc, or wondering which end of a bottle of chianti is the "nose?" With this immersive guide to all things wine, you'll soon become an expert. Pour over vibrant infographics and learn through “Did you know?” boxes as you try out a selection of taste tests, and get a handle on grape varieties and regions. This wine guide is a beautiful gift for the wine lover in your life, or the book for beginners you’ve been searching for to enjoy, understand and appreciate wine.

Author: Olive R. Jones
Publisher: National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Environment Canada, Parks
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
For this study 211 cylindrical sealed and dated bottles and 127 completeundated bottles were examined to establish criteria for dating cylindrical"wine" bottles made between 1735 and 1850. Based on capacity, body height, base diameter, and dates of manufacture, four distinct body styles wereisolated.

Author: Norman G. Finkelstein
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1935928775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish "homeland". But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and books by commentators as prominent as President Jimmy Carter and as well-respected in the scholarly community as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Peter Beinart, have increasingly pinpointed the fundamental illiberalism of the Israeli state. In the light of these exposes, the support of America Jews for Israel has begun to fray. This erosion has been particularly marked among younger members of the community. A 2010 Brandeis University poll found that only about one quarter of Jews aged under 40 today feel "very much" connected to Israel. In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein's customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel's record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.

Author: Norman G. Finkelstein
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1939293723
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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In the past five years Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions. On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological. Senior Israeli politicians have not discouraged such perceptions, indeed they have actively encouraged them. After the 2008-9 assault Israel’s then-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, boasted, “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded.” However, as Norman G. Finkelstein sets out in this concise, paradigm-shifting new book, a closer examination of Israel’s motives reveals a state whose repeated recourse to savage war is far from irrational. Rather, Israel’s attacks have been designed to sabotage the possibility of a compromise peace with the Palestinians, even on terms that are favorable to it. Looking also at machinations around the 2009 UN sponsored Goldstone report and Turkey’s forlorn attempt to seek redress in the UN for the killing of its citizens in the 2010 attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla, Finkelstein documents how Israel has repeatedly eluded accountability for what are now widely recognized as war crimes. Further, he shows that, though neither side can claim clear victory in these conflicts, the ensuing stalemate remains much more tolerable for Israelis than for the beleaguered citizens of Gaza. A strategy of mass non-violent protest might, he contends, hold more promise for a Palestinian victory than military resistance, however brave.

Author: Peter Eglin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040034527
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
What is the life of a Palestinian worth to intellectuals in Canadian universities and news media? Analyzing the Israel Effect documents and analyzes the discursive and organizational methods by which public criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is silenced in Canada, as experienced through ten episodes in the life of the author over a thirty-year period from 1990-2020 in interaction with his university and local and national Canadian news media. As a sociological work the book is a critical autoethnography. But it is also an atrocity tale, a horror story of institutional self-censorship amounting to the abrogation of intellectual responsibility by those specifically charged with upholding it. In the end, the book is a crossover between academic treatise and journalistic exposé, “a historical narrative written by an academic from the standpoint of a political participant-observer” (Rajan Philips). The Israel Effect itself is analyzed as a three-tier propaganda industry. Hasbara is produced in Israel (Tier 1), disseminated to Israel Lobby groups around the world (Tier 2) and independently re-produced, actively and passively, by the “intellectual” institutions – universities and news media (Tier 3). This book is about the non-Jewish, non-Zionist institutions of Tier 3, the onlookers to war crimes, ethnic cleansing and, arguably, genocide, as in Gaza in October-November 2023. This work stands as a compelling testament to the importance of preserving freedom of expression, and the vital role intellectuals play in challenging injustice and promoting transparency. It is ideal for scholars, activists, and anyone seeking to understand the complexities of political activism and the power dynamics behind public discourse.