Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam, and the West by David Solway

New English Review Press is pleased to announce the publication of our fifty-second title: Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam, and the West by David Solway:

During these shocking times of war, violence, and hate many are now seeking answers to important questions. What are the bases of the claims of the Jewish people to the Holy Land? What are the foundations of the conflicts between Muslims and Jews? What does Western Culture and its decline have to do with Israel and the Muslims? How does the rise of extreme leftism in Canada and the United States facilitate and encourage extreme hate and violence at home and in the Middle East? These and many other questions are answered by David Solway in this timely collection of essays– easily read, easily understood, and written with erudition, scholarship, and style.

Solway’s style is appropriate for general readers or those with long backgrounds of knowledge of Judaism, Islam, Israel, the Middle East, American and Canadian cultural and political radicalism and decline, the Jewish People, and the intersection of Judaism and Islam in the Middle East.

The most recent horror for the Jews that began on October 7, 2023, can be better understood with a clear understanding of Israel, diaspora Jews, ancient and modern Jewish history, and the decline of the West into moral relativism, communism, and leftist utopianism.

Times of strife and horror are best explained by clarity of thought and writing. Solway provides both in this important work that provides both context and background to the horrors seen recently in Israel, across Europe, in the United States, and across the world.

Advance Praise for Crossing the Jordan:

With his characteristic erudition and clear-eyed realism, David Solway here takes aim at numerous sacred cows about Israel and Islam. Crossing the Jordan provides a bracing wake-up call for those who have been buffaloed and bamboozled, and a feast of spot-on insights and revelations delivered with Solway’s always delightful wit.
–Robert Spencer, bestselling author of The Critical Qur’an and Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization.

David Solway is that rare rose, a modern-day man of letters. He is a poet, an essayist and a commentator. The reasons to read him are plain: for his courage of thought, his excellence of style, and the range of his interests and thinking. There is no one writing with more force and consistency, and certainly no one who offers such a freight of insight conveyed with the elan of actual literature, than Solway.
–Rex Murphy is a Canadian commentator and author, primarily on Canadian political and social matters. He was the regular host of CBC Radio One’s Cross Country Checkup, a nationwide call-in show, for 21 years. He currently writes a syndicated column for the National Post.

David Solway is a writer’s writer. He rightly writes that “awareness precedes action. Recollection influences the future.” His focus is the history, experiences, and fate of the Jewish people who, with a very small population, have made an outsized contribution to the advancement of humanity. This book is an exceptionally erudite, well-thought and argued defense of Jewishness, Israel, and Jews. Solway is a champion of reason and of the Jewish people. He writes, “we still need to talk about what we cannot talk about.” This is a powerful collection not only for Jewish readers but for all those whose hearts are with humanity.
–Daniel Mallock, author of Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution

David Solway is a Canadian essayist, songwriter and poet. Winner of several Canada Council and Writers’ Federation Awards, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and a lifetime achievement award from Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, he has published over 30 volumes of poetry, travel, translation, education theory and politics, including Canadian non-fiction bestseller The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity. His most recent book is Notes from a Derelict Culture. He has also released two CDs of original songs. Formerly writer-in- residence at Concordia University in Montreal, Solway has taught at colleges and universities in Canada, the U.S. and Europe and represented Canada in Europe for the federal government. He was a Contributing Editor for Canadian Notes & Queries and Associate Editor for Books in Canada. He is a member of the President’s Circle, University of Toronto; the Quebec Writers’ Federation; the Research Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute; the Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights & Freedoms; and is an Affiliate Member, Order of the Knights Templar, Rosslyn Priory, Scotland. He has written for a variety of online publications, including FrontPage Magazine, American Thinker, PJ Media, LifeSiteNews, The Epoch Times, The Pipeline, New English Review, and C2C. Solway lives in Vancouver with his wife, author and video content creator Janice Fiamengo.