Books by Richard Ben Cramer
How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
In How Israel Lost Richard Ben Cramer analyzes the four questions that have bedeviled Israel and Palestine for almost forty years:
I. Why do we care about Israel?
II. Why don¹t the Palestinians have a state?
III. What is a Jewish state?
IV. Why is there no peace?
Cramer illustrates how Israel is losing her soul by maintaining her occupation of the lands conquered in the Six Day War. Israel has become a victim of that occupation no less than the Palestinians, who must have a nation of their own.
Both his observations and argument are drawn with startling clarity, informed by the fierce and fearless reporting that won him the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East coverage.
Copies
No copies available.
How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
Once in a great while, a book comes along that not only discusses a topic of interest, it changes the boundaries of that discussion forever. This is such a book. In How Israel Lost Richard Ben Cramer analyzes the four questions that have bedeviled Israel and Palestine for almost forty years:
I. Why Do We Care About Israel?
II. Why Don't the Palestinians Have a State?
III. What Is a Jewish State?
IV. Why Is There No Peace?
With personal observation and sharp and challenging argument, Cramer insists that Israel is losing her soul by maintaining her occupation of the lands conquered in the Six Day War. Israel has become a victim of that occupation no less than the Palestinians, who must have a nation of their own. Cramer makes clear for the first time why the occupation endures and how it corrupts and corrodes the societies of both Arab and Jew.
Cramer's portrait of those societies is both up to the minute and timeless, enlivened at every step by his trademark humor, by humane understanding of the people caught in the conflict, and by his astonishing gift for language, theirs and ours. Both his observations and arguments are drawn with startling clarity, informed by the fierce and fearless reporting that won him the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East coverage twenty-five years ago.
The result is a book destined to produce both heat and light -- it is both shocking and a delight to read. This is journalism so sharp that it will change the story it set out to tell.
Once in a great while, a book comes along that not only discusses a topic of interest, it changes the boundaries of that discussion forever. This is such a book. In How Israel Lost Richard Ben Cramer analyzes the four questions that have bedeviled Israel and Palestine for almost forty years:
I. Why Do We Care About Israel?
II. Why Don't the Palestinians Have a State?
III. What Is a Jewish State?
IV. Why Is There No Peace?
With personal observation and sharp and challenging argument, Cramer insists that Israel is losing her soul by maintaining her occupation of the lands conquered in the Six Day War. Israel has become a victim of that occupation no less than the Palestinians, who must have a nation of their own. Cramer makes clear for the first time why the occupation endures and how it corrupts and corrodes the societies of both Arab and Jew.
Cramer's portrait of those societies is both up to the minute and timeless, enlivened at every step by his trademark humor, by humane understanding of the people caught in the conflict, and by his astonishing gift for language, theirs and ours. Both his observations and arguments are drawn with startling clarity, informed by the fierce and fearless reporting that won him the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East coverage twenty-five years ago.
The result is a book destined to produce both heat and light -- it is both shocking and a delight to read. This is journalism so sharp that it will change the story it set out to tell.
Copies
No copies available.
The Best American Sports Writing 2004 (The Best American Series)
by Glenn Stout, Richard Ben Cramer
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.
“Cracker-jack writing from some of the country’s best-known sports journalists.” — Publishers Weekly
With Richard Ben Cramer at the helm, this year’s selections embrace the world of sports in all its drama, humanity, and excitement, from swimming the Arctic Ocean to high school football. Today’s foremost journalists shed light on Mia Hamm, Amare Stoudemire, and on sports’ underbelly as a professional baseball team scalps its own tickets and as women single-mindedly pursue million-dollar athletes. We witness the World Taxidermy Championships, the final days of the Michael Jordan Wizards, and much more.
Copies
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What It Takes: The Way to the White House
"Quite possibly the finest book on presidential politics ever written, combining meticulous reporting and compelling, at times soaringly lyrical, prose." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race -- and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.
Copies
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Joe DiMaggio : The Hero's Life
Joe DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good.
In the hard-knuckled thirties, he was the immigrant boy who made it big—and spurred the New York Yankees to a new era of dynasty. He was Broadway Joe, the icon of elegance, the man who wooed and won Marilyn Monroe—the most beautiful girl America could dream up.
Joe DiMaggio was a mirror of our best self. And he was also the loneliest hero we ever had.
In this groundbreaking biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer presents a shocking portrait of a complicated, enigmatic life. The story that DiMaggio never wanted told, tells of his grace—and greed; his dignity, pride—and hidden shame. It is a story that sweeps through the twentieth century, bringing to light not just America's national game, but the birth (and the price) of modern national celebrity.
Copies
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Being Poppy: A Portrait of George Herbert Walker Bush
The most intimate portrait of GEORGE H. W. BUSH ever published George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first president of the United States and the patriarch of America’s most powerful political dynasty, never wrote a memoir. But bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Richard Ben Cramer took the full measure of President Bush in his thousand-page epic, What It Takes—one of the most influential and respected works of journalism and biography of the modern era.
Drawn from those pages and edited by Cramer shortly before he died, this book traces how seminal moments in President Bush’s life formed his character and foretold his legacy. The result is a loving portrait that remains as fresh, relevant, and insightful as the day it was first published.
***
Tell the truth, Bush wasn’t much for programs, one way or the other. It wasn’t that he wanted to do anything . . . except a good job. He wanted to be a Senator. . . . Just about the time he was thinking it over, about to announce his big move, there were stories in the paper—front page, it was awful!—about this little girl in the Houston public housing, sleeping on the floor, who’d got bitten by a rat! God, what a shame! . . . Bush didn’t think about a program for housing, or maybe calling that Councilman he helped to elect—propose a rat eradication plan! No, he called home, that afternoon:
“Bar . . . You think we could give that family our baby bed?”
And they did. That very evening, George came home, packed up that bed, and took it right over. —from Being Poppy
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