Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978

Weeks before the Suez War of 1956, four-year-old Kai Bird, the son of an American Foreign Service officer, moved to Jerusalem with his family.

They settled in a small house, where young Kai could hear church bells and the Muslim call to prayer, and watch as donkeys and camels competed with cars for space on the narrow streets. To get to school, Kai was driven through Mandelbaum Gate, where armed soldiers guarded the line separating Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem from Arab-controlled East.

Crossing Mandelbaum Gate is a compelling personal history of growing up an American in the midst of three major wars and three turbulent decades in the Middle East.

Bird, his parents sympathetic to Palestinian independence and his wife the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, has written a masterful and highly accessible book – at once a vivid chronicle of a life spent between cultures as well as a consummate history of a region in turmoil. It is an indispensable addition to the literature on the modern Middle East.