Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1962, he was appointed a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and in 1968 he became Winston Churchill's official biographer. He was in Israel during the October War of 1973 and came under Syrian shellfire on the Golan Heights. His Jewish History Atlas is a classic work of reference. He has been a visiting professor at both Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University, and spends part of every year in Israel. He has also written histories of the First and Second World Wars, of D-Day, of the Day the War Ended (in 1945) and of the Holocaust.

Introduction; Herzl in Basle; First Kibbutz; Balfour Declaration; Liberation of Jerusalem; Jewish High Commissioner; Opening of Hebrew University; Jewish National Institutions; Partition; British Restrictions on Jewish Immigration; European War; Closing the Doors to Holocaust Survivors; The UN Resolution; War of Independence; The Siege of Jerusalem; Mass Immigration of Jews from Arab Lands; Building the Jewish State; Six-Day War; Building Up a Modern Nation After; October War; "Let My People Go"; Terror in the Skies and at the Olympics; Search for Peace; Oslo Agreements; Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin; Israel Among the Nations; Continual Search for Peace; A Vibrant Land.