EXODUS, by Leon Uris.

The Perfect Historically-based Book.

It's the perfect historically-based book, since it blends together historical truth and pure fiction in the best way, when the oven is Uris' great talent for epic stories.

Yet, most important for me was the completely objective insight into the Israeli-Palestinian problem, as seen by an outsider in Israel / Palestine back then. The book was also written about the same time the events in the story take place, so it's much easier to analize the beginning of that painful relationship (if you can call it relationship) without digging past all the added complications since then.

The Haj, By Leon Uris

Very good story, but biased to some degree Leon Uris never pretended to be an "objective" observer. He is Israeli and writes from Israeli perspective. Given that, this book is less biased than his other books, like "Exodus". It is a *very* engaging and suspenseful story. I could not put it down from start to end. This quality alone compensates a great deal of his lack of "objectivity". In the final analysis, many of his negative points about Arabs are more-or-less true, especially as things were back in 1948. I still like this book even though it is more biased towards the Israeli side than the "pure objective" book would be.