While there have been many histories of Israel written over the decades, Arthur Hertzberg’s The Zionist Idea, published in 1959, remains a classic guide to the intellectual underpinnings of Zionism. It is now joined almost sixty years later by Michael Brenner’s excellent book, In Search of Israel: The history of an idea. Inspired by the seventieth anniversary of Israel’s establishment, the passage of time has allowed Brenner to do something different from Hertzberg in his retelling of the Zionist idea. He has written a book that uses the founding voices of Zionism to test whether their vision has been fulfilled. In this sense, In Search of Israel is a retrospective overview of Israel’s history, a kind of parlour game in which the reader gets to ask if so-and-so came back to life, would they recognise the state in its contemporary incarnation. This method of mixing vision with current reality can also be read as a counterfactual history, opening up questions about the paths not taken, or the options available in the Zionist armoury beyond military occupation. As Brenner writes of his project: ‘It is the story of the real and the imagined Israel, of Israel as a state and as an idea.’