A well-written, balanced, and intriguing reference.
An examination of Zionism through its most influential proponents.
Former New Yorker Middle East correspondent Viorst (What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism, 2002, etc.) takes a largely objective approach to a controversial subject: the quest for a Jewish state. The book will be especially useful to those new to the idea of Zionism and its historical implications while also providing food for thought to readers more engaged with the topic. After setting the stage with a succinct prologue, Viorst discusses Theodor Herzl, widely considered the father of modern Zionism. The author then moves on to Chaim Weizmann, who was influential in bringing about the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of a Jewish state. Next up is Vladimir Jabotinsky, whose militant brand of Zionism was dubbed Revisionism. Viorst takes a subtle stance against Revisionist Zionism throughout the rest of the book, believing that it has left an intractable legacy of violence and of Arab subjugation. David Ben-Gurion, certainly a soldier at heart but not of the Revisionist brand, brought Zionism to a new level of reality with his declaration of the state of Israel in 1948. Revisionism would be taken up in the Israeli leadership by Menachem Begin and given religious sanction through Rav Abraham Isaac Kook and his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. Viorst concludes with an examination of the events leading up to the current regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. The author echoes the sentiments of Herzl that once a Jewish state was created, Jews would find it difficult to live with differing points of view. “The chief conflict among Zionists today,” he writes, “focuses on whether Israel will make the concessions needed to reconcile with its neighbors, or continue indefinitely to use force to dominate them.” Indeed, Viorst’s greatest lesson is that the Zionist movement is anything but singular in character.
A well-written, balanced, and intriguing reference.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07800-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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