New under the Sun explores Zionist perceptions of-and responses to-Palestine-s climate. From the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Netta Cohen traces the production of climactic knowledge through a rich archive that draws from medicine and botany, technology and economics, and architecture and planning. As Cohen convincingly argues, this knowledge was not only shaped by Jewish settlers- Eurocentric views but was also indebted to colonial practices and institutions. Zionists- claims to the land were often based on the construction of Jewish settlers as natives, even while this was complicated by their alienated responses to Palestine-s climate. New under the Sun offers a highly original environmental lens on the ways in which Zionism-s spatial ambitions and racial fantasies transformed the lives of humans and nonhumans in Palestine.
