UCSC alumnus Gershom Gorenberg is the author of the forthcoming book, The Unmaking of Israel, on the crisis of Israeli democracy and how to solve it. The book will be published in November by HarperCollins and is now available for pre-order at all the usual places.

Gershom’s previous book is The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (Times Books). Based on previously unpublished documents and extensive interviews, The Accidental Empire presents a strikingly new picture of Israel’s post-1967 history, of major Israeli leaders, and of Israel-U.S. relations.

He is also the author of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, which portrays the role of religious radicalism 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, and edited Seventy Facets: A Commentary on the Torah from the Pages from the Jerusalem Report.

As a commentator on Middle East affairs and the interface of religion and politics, Gershom has appeared on Sixty Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, Fresh Air and on CNN and BBC. For many years an associate editor of The Jerusalem Report, he is now a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Mother Jones and in Hebrew for Ha’aretz.

Gershom has been a visiting professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and 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 a nuanced view of politics, Mideast affairs and religion.

Gershom was born in St. Louis and grew up in California. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, he came to Israel in 1977 and earned an MA in education at the Hebrew University. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, journalist Myra Noveck, and their three children, Yehonatan, Yasmin and Shir-Raz. He is an active member of Kehillat Yedidya, the pioneering progressive Orthodox congregation in South Jerusalem.