The Genius of Israel, Dan Senor
The Genius of Israel, Dan Senor
1 Rating(s)
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

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

Author: Dan Senor, Saul Singer

Narrator: Dan Senor

Unabridged: 9 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2023


Synopsis

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.

About 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 JournalThe New York TimesUSA 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. 

About Saul Singer

Saul Singer is coauthor of the bestselling book Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. He is a former editor and columnist at the Jerusalem Post and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other publications. Singer has given keynote speeches at innovation conferences around the world including Beijing, Sydney, Singapore, London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Oslo, Nairobi, and Sao Paulo. Before moving to Israel in 1994, he served for ten years as an advisor to US Members of Congress. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ronald on December 25, 2023

I thoroughly this book. From the authors of Startup Nation, which documented Israel’s phenomenal contributions to entrepreneurship and innovation—they are ranked behind the USA in per capita innovation—this works seeks to understand why Israelis are so happy. As of 2021, its GDP per capita surpassed......more

Goodreads review by Sterling on January 21, 2024

My coworker lent me this book after a conversation on current events. It was rife with data and studies that explain a wide range of things about Israel. This book came out just a few months before October 7, 2023 which has been an incredibly divisive moment in discourse around the country. With tha......more

Goodreads review by Jason on December 23, 2023

Very easy to read, it simply and efficiently breaks down Israeli society - and explains why Israel ranks so high on the happiness scale (and low on the despair scale). There are good anecdotes/stories throughout. It made me think about what we can take from Israeli society to help improve life in th......more

Goodreads review by Ian on January 19, 2024

This was an amazing nonfiction book all around. I have just finished Rise and Kill First at the end of 2023, so I expected this to be another politically charged book about the war crimes they have been doing through history. I was pleasantly surprised to quickly see it was mainly a cultural book re......more

Goodreads review by Stetson on January 29, 2024

This book, overshadowed by events, is a look at social institutions and customs within modern Israel. It contains a lot of interesting interviews and social commentary along with some economic and demographic data. The most interesting phenomenon is the rare nexus of high fertility and high income,......more