A review by taratearex
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

 This is a really fascinating book about Palestine and it's history over thousands of years. This is not really written as an overall history of Palestine though, it's more written as a reference book to the history of what the land was called over time and through that shows who lived on the land, as well as who passed through the land and wrote about it. And it also reads like a linguistic study, there is a lot about language over time, which I found fascinating. This is a really interesting way to look at the history of Palestine, especially since so much history has been ignored, erased, and rewritten. This book really highlights how we don't get history told from people who experienced oppression and colonization, it's written by the oppressors and by white people and this really emphasizes how much that effects what we learn about history. It also really highlights how terrible our (American) education around the Middle East is.

It's a fascinating and devastating book. I do think this not an intro level book- for nonfiction readers and people learning about the region, but I do hope more people read it. Because this book is written in a very reference book way, it is very dense to read and there is a lot of repetition (I think some of that makes sense given the structure, but some of it also seemed like editing issues).

I found listening to the audiobook while following along in the physical book really helpful to stay engaged given the writing style. The voice actor does an amazing job. The audiobook is available on Everand (Scribd).