Ally : My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide – Oren Michael B. (2016)

Michael B. Oren's memoir recounts his time as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, a period of transformative change in America and violent upheaval throughout the Middle East. An American by birth and a historian by training, Oren arrived in Washington as Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took office. During his tenure, Israel and the United States grappled with the Palestinian peace process, the Arab Spring, international terrorism and the Iranian nuclear programme. The alliance between the two countries, forged during the Truman administration, came under enormous strain, and its future was questioned on both sides. Oren interweaves his personal journey with behind-the-scenes accounts of meetings between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, high-stakes summits with Mahmoud Abbas and diplomatic crises surrounding the world's most contested strip of land. He writes as someone who treasures his American identity while proudly serving the Jewish state he has come to call home, presenting the alliance through the eyes of a man who loves two countries and represents one to the other. This edition includes a new afterword on the Iran nuclear agreement, the 2016 presidential race and the future of the U.S.-Israel alliance.