“Thrilling, terrifying, and awe-inspiring.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore

"An absolutely captivating story where the reality that Friedman has uncovered is far more fascinating than the myth. This is a book, in every sense, about the distance between heaven and earth, and the courage it takes to cross it.” —Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews

“Gripping . . . Out of the Sky is at once an eloquent inquiry into heroism, a wrenching chronicle of bravery and betrayal, and a poignant evocation of a generation hurled from innocence into the maw of history.”— Ben Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial

“Hauntingly beautiful” — Jonathan Rosen, author of The Best Minds

“Matti Friedman not only sheds light on an underdiscussed period but wisely hints at how this heroic narrative has helped shape modern Jewish identity.” —Judy Batalion, author of The Last Woman of Warsaw

Out of the Sky is the story of a woman who became a legend—and of the eternal interplay between human lives and history, how our stories, taken together, become the record of who we are.” —Jonathan Safran Foer

In 1944, a group of young Jewish refugees agreed to parachute back into Europe as British agents. The British needed multilingual infiltrators behind enemy lines, while the refugees, only recently escaped from occupied Europe, were desperate to fight back against the murderous Nazi regime. Yet by the end of the mission, not a single Nazi was harmed and not a single Jew was saved, and many of the refugees died in the process. Even so, some of their names would become legendary, especially that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Senesh, best known as the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli, Eli.” Their story would become one of the young state of Israel’s founding myths—but what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? What made them heroes?

Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists, including Senesh, from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. In Out of the Sky, he tells the gripping and surprising tale of a forgotten moment, demonstrating how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, he creates an argument that has deep resonance in our own time.

PRODUCT DETAILS

ISBN: 978-1954118997
Price: $28.00
On-sale date: 3/24/2026