The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World

Written by Dan Senor and Saul Singer

Narrated by Dan Senor

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * How has a small nation of 9 million people, forced to fight for its existence and security since its founding and riven by ethnic, religious, and economic divides, proven resistant to so many of the societal ills plaguing other wealthy democracies?

Why do Israelis have among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse? Why is Israel’s population young and growing while all other wealthy democracies are aging and shrinking? How can it be that Israel, according to a United Nations ranking, is the fourth happiest nation in the world? Why do Israelis tend to look to the future with hope, optimism, and purpose while the rest of the West struggles with an epidemic of loneliness, teen depression, and social decline?

Dan Senor and Saul Singer, the writers behind the international bestseller Start-Up Nation, have long been students of the global innovation race. But as they spent time with Israel’s entrepreneurs and political leaders, soldiers and students, scientists and activists, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Tel Aviv techies, and Israeli Arabs, they realized that they had missed what really sets Israel apart.

Moving from military commanders integrating at-risk youth and people who are neurodiverse into national service, to high performing companies making space for working parents, from dreamers and innovators launching a duct-taped spacecraft to the moon, to bringing better health solutions to people around the world, The Genius of Israel tells the story of a diverse people and society built around the values of service, solidarity, and belonging.

Widely admired for having the world’s highest density of high-tech start-ups, Israel’s greatest innovation may not be a technology at all, but Israeli society itself. Understanding how a country facing so many challenges can be among the happiest provides surprising insights into how we can confront the crisis of community, human connectedness, and purpose in modern life.

Bold, timely, and insightful, Senor and Singer’s latest work shines an important light on the impressive innovative distinctions of Israeli society—and what other communities and countries can learn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797124544

Dan Senor

Dan Senor is coauthor of the bestseller Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. He was a senior advisor to Paul Ryan’s 2012 campaign for vice president and foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. A former Defense Department official, Senor has been based in Baghdad and at US Central Command in Qatar, and was a US Senate aide in the 1990s. He has written for The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA TODAY, and The Washington Post. He is the host of the Call Me Back podcast. Today, he is an executive at an international investment firm. He was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Harvard Business School, and lives in New York City with his wife and two sons. 

Reviews for The Genius of Israel

[Andre Lefebvre · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Is such a book relevant in the midst of a Zionist Israeli military committing genocide and being dragged to the International Criminal Court to answer for their crimes against humanity, and violating the Genocide Convention? The list of their crimes is too gruesome to note here but anyone can and should be aware.

[Ahmed Abdelfattah Ahmed · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Israel built on ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians with full support of the British empire, since 1948 it received the highest USA military and financial aid more than any other country, also the Israeli government got 60 billions dollars from Germany as compensation for the victims of Holocaust, Israel has preferential treatment from all western countries, so it’s really a miracle, without the western financial and political coverup of this racist apartheid state it will collapse in one year and it will collapse after its current genocidal campaign because all it’s propaganda got exposed and humanity will not allow a racist genocidal entity to continue, either they give equal rights to the real land owners the indigenous Palestinians or they can go back to Europe like white supremacists left South Africa because they can’t tolerate treating Africans as equals, peace

[Lee Winters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Even in a post Oct 7 world it was an incredible backstory and perspective on Israel and how it’s become a Nation and a People