At first glance, the two books inhabit different worlds. One, carrying the imprint of a prestigious publisher, is riding high in the Amazon bestseller chart. The other, from a tiny publisher in Atlanta, would not make a bestseller list on Amazon or anywhere else. The first book is splendidly printed and bound, reflecting the gravitas of the authors. The second looks and feels cheap, like a trinket from a murky political gathering.
And yet this is one instance where packaging tells us very little. What counts is that the two books – Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, which everyone is talking about, and James Petras’s The Power of Israel in the United States, an unabashedly conspiratorial tome unnoticed by the reviewers – focus upon the same subject. What counts even more – lest readers should think that my purpose is to damn by association – are the arresting similarities between the two books in terms of argument.