A history essential to understanding the present

Beirut was once called the Paris of the eastern Mediterranean. The land of Israel and Palestine, now marked by recurring violence, was imagined as a land of milk and honey. The birthplace of three monotheistic religions has become a center of conflict affecting half the world.

Behind the headlines lies an epic of collapsing empires and rising powers, two thousand years of exile, world wars, broken promises, unrealized prophecies, and extraordinary love and hatred. Its characters include exiled kings, ambitious chiefs, saints and national heroes, explorers, diplomats, spies, journalists, oil magnates, and traders.

Four connected histories

1. A shattered mirror: the Ottoman decline, First World War, imperial partition, and the making of the modern Middle East.
2. A two-thousand-year return: Jewish origins and diaspora, antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the road to Israel.
3. Old hatred, new conflict: Arab nationalism, the Arab–Israeli wars, oil, Palestine, and the rise and collapse of peace.
4. Inferno: Iraq and Iran, revolution, dictatorship, the Gulf wars, 9/11, and the Iraq War.

Across more than seventy main episodes and hundreds of multilingual sources, California 101 connects military, religious, cultural, national, and diplomatic history with character-driven storytelling. Without this history, we cannot understand today’s world—or its future.