YOU HAVE TO FEEL SORRY FOR BOOKS that pass their shelf life before they’ve even been published. “Due out on 8 December”, quipped Private Eye last year of Harry Cole and James Heale’s book about Liz Truss’s “astonishing rise to power” … “the book, that is, not its subject”. The Genius of Israel, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, may suffer a similar fate.
Sent to the presses last summer and published, infelicitously, in November, it responds to a particular historical moment — the struggle over the structure of Israel’s government. But since 7 October 2023, the debate that once engulfed Israel over the government’s plans for judicial reform has all seemed rather quaint.
is a follow-up to the same authors’ 2009 bestseller, , which drew attention to the remarkable success of Israel’s tech sector. In their new book, they broaden their scope to Israeli society as a whole.
