Nearly 125 years after the First Zionist Congress in August 1897, Theodor Herzl remains Israel’s iconic founder. Herzl was not the first to say that “the Jews are a people,” or that this harassed, belittled, detested, oppressed people needed a state in their homeland. But he said it in the right way at the right time. His efforts solidified the Zionist idea and launched the Zionist movement, which came to fruition half a century later, in 1948, with the founding of the State of Israel. The pivotal moment in Herzl’s journey – and the gamechanger in Jewish his - tory – came in 1897, in Basel, when he convenes the Zionist Congress. This moment starts galvanizing the Jewish people and puts Zionism on many non-Jews’ mattering map. In this volume we see Herzl traveling frequently, often greeted warmly in the highest of circles, not only as a well-known journalist but as a leader of his people. Building a global movement trying to unite a scattered people and impress a skeptical sultan is not easy. Inevitably, communal clashes, political intrigues, and diplomatic scuffles start consuming more of his time. But Herzl remains the crusading journalist, too. His writings keep the focus on the Jewish people’s suffering and their need to have a state, like other nations, even though this ordinary-seeming state would be a platform for expressing their extraordinary ideals.