ABOUT
Gershom Gorenberg is the author of War of Shadows: Code Breakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East. Based on documents that remained classified for decades, War of Shadows demolishes myths of World War II and solves the mystery of the spy affair that nearly brought Rommel’s army and SS death squads to Cairo and Jerusalem.
Gorenberg’s previous book was The Unmaking of Israel, a provocative examination of Israeli history and the crisis of Israeli democracy. "Until I read The Unmaking of Israel," wrote novelist Michael Chabon, "I didn’t think it could be possible to feel more despairing, and then more terribly hopeful, about Israel."
Gorenberg is also the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977, a strikingly new picture of Israel’s post-1967 history, of major Israeli leaders, and of Israel-U.S. relations.
His first book was The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, a close look at the role of religious radicalism and apocalyptic visions in the Mideast conflict. He co-authored The Jerusalem Report’s 1996 biography of Yitzhak Rabin, Shalom Friend, winner of the National Jewish Book Award.
Gershom is a columnist for The Washington Post and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and in Hebrew for Ha’aretz. He will return to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 2021 to teach his workshop on writing history.
As a commentator on Middle East, Gershom has appeared on Sixty Minutes, Nightline, Fresh Air and on CNN and BBC. He has lectured at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Council, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Middle East Institute, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and for universities, congregations and other organizations seeking an insightful view of politics, Mideast affairs and religion.
He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, journalist Myra Noveck. They have three children – Yehonatan, Yasmin and Shir-Raz.