Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Kai Bird (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2010

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER KAI BIRD’S fascinating memoir of his early years spent in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon provides an original and illuminating perspective into the Arab-Israeli conflict. Weeks before the Suez War of 1956, four-year-old Kai Bird, son of a garrulous, charming American Foreign Service officer, moved to Jerusalem with his family. They settled in a small house, where young Kai could hear church bells and the Muslim call to prayer and watch as donkeys and camels competed with cars for space on the narrow streets. Each day on his way to school, Kai was driven through Mandelbaum Gate, where armed soldiers guarded the line separating Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem from Arab-controlled East. He had a front-seat view to both sides of a divided city—and the roots of the widening conflict between Arabs and Israelis.

Bird would spend much of his life crossing such lines—as a child in Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and later, as a young man in Lebanon. Crossing Mandelbaum Gate is his compelling personal history of growing up an American in the midst of three major wars and three turbulent decades in the Middle East. The Zelig-like Bird brings readers into such conflicts as the Suez War, the Six Day War of 1967, and the Black September hijackings in 1970 that triggered the Jordanian civil war. Bird vividly portrays such emblematic figures as the erudite George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening; Jordan’s King Hussein; the Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled; Salem bin Laden, Osama’s older brother and a family friend; Saudi King Faisal; President Nasser of Egypt; and Hillel Kook, the forgotten rescuer of more than 100,000 Jews during World War II.

Bird, his parents sympathetic to Palestinian self-determination and his wife the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, has written a masterful and highly accessible book—at once a vivid chronicle of a life spent between cultures as well as a consummate history of a region in turmoil. It is an indispensable addition to the literature on the modern Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of American Prometheus, offers a compelling hybrid of memoir and history, weaving together recollections of his childhood in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt; the stories of his wife's Holocaust survivor parents; and rigorous scholarship on the region. The book's title—Mandelbaum Gate once separated Israeli-controlled Western Jerusalem from the Jordanian-controlled East—indicates a view on the conflict, and it's certainly that, but it's also much more: readers are given ringside seats to Cairo under Nasser, the author's American family's friends (including Osama bin Laden's elder brother), and Bird's years in India and the U.S. during the heyday of the antiwar movement of the '60s. Notable events and figures (airplane hijacker Leila Khaled, for example, or the Palestinian-Jordanian battles known as Black September) are given detailed treatment and their continuing resonance is made clear. Bird's brushes with history—his first girlfriend was held hostage on an airplane hijacked to win Khaled's release, for instance—brings home the deeply messy humanity of the stories he binds together in this kaleidoscopic and captivating book. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The interminable conflict between Arabs and Israelis, sadly, lends itself to visual images that reduce both sides to caricatures. One of the treasures of this superb memoir is Bird’s determination to put a human face on some of the participants in this conflict. His father, an American foreign-service officer, brought his family to Jerusalem in 1956, and young Kai frequently passed through Mandelbaum Gate, the dividing line between the Israeli- and Jordanian-controlled sectors. Over the next 22 years, he lived and traveled in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. He seamlessly melds personal history and the story of his family within the turmoil surrounding them, which included three major wars, the spate of airline hijackings, and the prominence of Black September. Although broadly sympathetic to Palestinian aspirations and suffering, Bird, whose wife is the child of Holocaust survivors, is also acutely sensitive to the fears and dilemmas faced by Israelis. This is a deeply felt and moving chronicle of one person’s up-close view of the human cost of this seemingly endless struggle. --Jay Freeman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416544402
• ISBN-13: 978-1416544401
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #539,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kai Bird's most recent book is a memoir about the Middle East entitled Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner, April 27, 2010). It is a 2011 Finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima\'s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Kathmandu, Nepal with his wife and son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insights from the son of an American Foreign Service officer that grew up in the Middle East, May 11, 2010

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This personal history is also an in-depth explanation of a great deal that has happened in the Middle East since the founding of the state of Israel. The author is the son of an American Foreign Service officer and his family moved to Jerusalem in 1956 when he was four years old. This was only a few weeks before Israel, Britain and France colluded in an attack on Egypt, the Israeli goal was to seize the Sinai while Britain and France wanted to regain control of the Suez Canal.
Possessing a perspective that only a child can have, he watched the growing rift between the Israelis and the Palestinians. One of the most interesting components of the book is his descriptions of how cosmopolitan the area called Palestine was at the time he was there and how small Jerusalem was. He was an eyewitness to people of all faiths walking the streets alongside animals and living out their lives. Bird also gives in-depth descriptions of some of the most significant people on the Palestinian side and voices his opinions on missed opportunities for peace between Arab and Jew.
In his youth, Bird also lived in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon and he was there during the 1967 war and had a "girlfriend" that was a passenger on the planes hijacked by the Black September group. His insights and discussions of the internal political situations in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Lebanon should be required reading for anyone interested in the Middle East or claiming to know something about the resolution of the problems.
Bird has some interesting and harsh comments for the holders of the American presidency from 1956 through 1970. In his opinion, the best solution to the Palestinian-Jewish problem would have been the establishment of a Palestinian state comprised of Jordan and the West Bank. His harshest criticism is leveled at the Johnson and Nixon administrations that propped up King Hussein of Jordan, which kept the country under Hashemite rule rather than the majority Palestinian. There is much to be said for that argument, because that was a solution that would have probably worked. The combination of the West Bank and Jordan could never be a valid military threat to Israel and would have provided a homeland for the Palestinians.
This is one of the best books about the reality on the ground in the Middle East that has ever been published. The insights into the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, would be an education to nearly everyone that thinks they know the history and situation there.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent memoir/history of an interesting life lived in the Middle East., June 17, 2010

By 

Narut Ujnat "Exchanger1" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I was given the chance to review this book by Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Prometheus. Given my interest in the Middle East, I was very excited to read this book.

The author tells the reader in the beginning that the book is a personal memoir and history of the region in which he grew up as the son of an American diplomat. As he lived in Places like Jerusalem (hence the metaphor for the crossing of the now non-existent Mandlebaum Gate) between Arab controlled East Jerusalem and Israeli controlled West Jerusalem, Cairo, Beirut, Saudi Arabia and India, Bird lived through many important events during the 1950's through 1970's.

I really didn't know what to expect from this book, but it turned out to be a great read. At first, I was annoyed by the constant shift in the narrative between the author's youthful memories and later events. However, after a while, the narrative made perfect sense. By describing his memories of the events as he lived through them (for example, the 1956 Arab/Israeli War) and later events, the author was giving is 'the rest of the story.' I found many of these anecdotes to be very interesting and I was surprised by my overall lack of knowledge of some versions of these events. The discussion of Egypt's Nasser and his leadership during the 1956 and 1967 wars was fascinating. Also, his own involvement during Black September in 1970 was also riveting during the Palestinian uprising in Jordan.

I also loved the descriptions of life in the Aramco Oil towns in Saudi Arabia during the 1950's. Indeed, as the author himself notes, life was certainly far more 'American' in these places then even America itself. And, as compared to now, these 'oil towns' are now fortified and enclosed.

Clearly, as I have noted in my own experiences in having visited the Middle East, the region has changed and not necessarily for the better as in earlier times Jews, Christians and Arabs mingled much more freely and less consciously then now. Having lived in Cairo during the 1950's and 1960's, Bird was able to experience this first hand.

I also believe the author's experiences to have a good insight into the dynamics of the region. As his father was an Arabist diplomat (his father predated the formation of Israel in 1948 in the US Foreign Service)), and by the author's own admission, he was fairly biased in how he saw many, many events. However, his later adult life has led him to understand the underlying reasons for the Arab/Israeli conflict in a way that I believe is accurate (I will leave it to the reader to discover these insights on their own).

I do have to say that the author discusses his own political activities, and this makes perfect sense in the context of the book, it is more personal memoir than historical narrative. His views may upset some readers looking for a particular viewpoint, in fact. But, I found his connections to people and places personally fascinating and important. However, I could imagine some may find his conclusions upsetting only because some readers will assume his viewpoints are biased. To this I say don't close off your mind to new ideas!

Overall, this book was mush like Thomas Friedman's great book from Beirut to Jerusalem. It was immensely enjoyable for me, and I imagine most anyone with a interest in the Middle East during the years 1950's and 1970's will be riveted by the author's life and the region's history. Highly recommended.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Challenging And Disturbing Memoir, May 3, 2010

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Kai Bird grew up as the young son of an American diplomat in Jerusalem, and later in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He writes from an insider's perspective about events in the Middle East and the actors who shaped these events. Now as an adult he revisits this history with the benefit of extensive research and adult study. What he has to say is not always "balanced" and won't be easy for some of us to hear.

Later in his life story, and in the book, he encounters his future wife, whose parents were survivors of the holocaust, and begins to understand how those events affected Jewish consciousness. Again, he paints a disturbing and challenging portrait.

There are few angels in Bird's memoir, many great men who did foolish and shortsighted things, msny tragic mistakes and missed opportunities. To read this book is to challenge whatever preconceptions one might have brought to his material. To Bird, one must acknowledge what Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe, the founding of Israel; and what Jews call the shoah, the holocaust, the defining never-again experience of the Jewish people.

Author Bird writes beautifully, managing to keep himself out of the story even as he writes of his own experiences. The book is challenging, for it raises fundamental questions about Israeli, Palestinian and American policy in the Middle East. Hard to read, and yet, I couldn't lay it down. If you're prepared for a serious and moving read, I recommend this book highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.