The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People Paperback – October 3, 2023

This is a masterful book.It focuses on the demographic, diplomatic and political history of:-The Jewish people…-The Americans…….. and their complex and shifting relationship to each other, the land of Israel, and the rest of the world over the past two hundred and fifty years.As a cautionary note, the book is 585 pages long and assumes a sophisticated understanding of the subjects at hand.Shown below is a segment from the end of the book which summarizes some of the main ideas the author addresses:‘Between the pandemic, the eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the hotly contested presidential election, 2020 was the most dramatic year in American politics since 1968, and momentous cultural, political, and economic changes were set in motion that would test the strength of American institutions and the resilience of American social order in the years to come. Yet even among these upheavals, the quantum entanglement between the Jewish people, the Jewish state, and the United States was as strong and as relevant to American politics as ever before.That entanglement dates back to the earliest moments of the American story. It deepened as both Protestant theologians and Enlightenment visionaries looked to the Restoration of the Jews as a consequence of the same forces shaping the American people and their Republic.The entanglement tightened during the late nineteenth century and continued into the Cold War. During those years, Americans discovered that the identity wars of the far-off Imperial Zone , the region dominated by the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires, were impossible to ignore. The nationalism that shattered the imperial zone created a global geopolitical crisis that ultimately produced two world wars and the Cold War that dominated the twentieth century and transformed America’s place in the world. It also stimulated the Great Wave of migrants that challenged, enriched, and reshaped American society in ways that still engage us today.The revolutionary transformation of the imperial zone was itself both product and sign of another revolution that was also upending American life. The industrial revolution disrupted the agrarian and mostly rural republic the Founders knew and replaced it with the kind of predominantly urban and deeply unequal society that many of the Founders believed was incompatible with the republican values they professed. The crowded, smoky cities of this industrial America teemed with Great Wave immigrants rooted in cultures and grounded in religions that ‘old stock’ Americans considered outlandish at best, subversive at worst. Old political ideologies had to be discarded and new ones developed for the challenges at home, even as Americans recalibrated their ideas about foreign policy to accommodate the uneven process that would culminate in America’s post-World War II assumption of world leadership in a dangerous new era dominated by fears of a nuclear holocaust.’

If you want to understand why support for Israel in the US is so deep and broad, this is the book to read.

Does a good job of analyzing the US-Israel connection within the appropriate context of other related foreign and domestic issues. Comes to conclusions that are different than the existing generally held opinions.

A very interesting, well researched and we'll written book. Strongly recommend it, especially for those who wish to learn about U.S -Israel history, and the historical contexts that shaped it.

Every week, we look forward to reading Mr. Meade's foreign affairs columns. In this book, every chapter can stand stand alone, like his op-eds.Having said that, from cover to cover, it is a great read, and is as much about world history since the 17th century as about Jewish history alone. In fact, I would guesstimate that well over on half of the book is general history about Europe, the Middle East, and America.

A very thorough explanation of US policy toward Israel, Israeli history, and geopolitics. I am going to read everything I can find of Mead’s.

Fine read, a lot of history, especially on the immigration front. I felt the author was quite centrist in his political perspectives until he stepped into Trump’s positions repeating the same mainstream media, beltway, establishment, Trump bashing talking points. He could have moderated his views and steadying himself emotionally. But, sadly, noting his sources and viewing this degradation in his stance, I have to only give it a 3 star, and would have given it 1 or none. But, I digress because I found the historical aspects educational.

Prudent editing would have made this tome more readable.