1. This book offers a serious and wide-ranging history of an intractable conflict. It reassesses the Arab-Israeli conflict by looking back to events in the 19th century and the earliest waves settlers.

2. It uses a variety of primary sources from the settlers and their neighbors to show on a grassroots and human level how conflict developed, and it also gives new interpretations of the early attempts to define and analyze the conflict.

3. Author Alan Dowty is a senior political scientist who is well-known for his explorations of the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict.