Based on interviews with dozens of people and research in more than 20 archival collections, Siniver’s sympathetic,...
The biography of a defender of Israel who advocated diplomacy over war.
Abba Eban (1915-2002) held significant positions in the Israeli government—representative to the United Nations, ambassador to the United States, Education and Culture minister, deputy prime minister, and minister of foreign affairs—but never served as prime minister, a position he coveted. In this engrossing, impressively researched biography, Siniver (Political Science and International Studies/Univ. of Birmingham; The Yom Kippur War: Politics, Diplomacy, Legacy, 2013, etc.) traces the career of a statesman acclaimed more outside of his country than within. Eban’s urbanity, fastidiousness, and flowery speaking style contributed to a perception that he was “aloof and condescending.” Although he spoke 10 languages, Yiddish was not one of them, and his “ingrained internationalism, suave demeanor,” and elite education set him apart from “rough and tumble Israeli politics.” In many ways, Siniver asserts, Eban was like his friend Adlai Stevenson, a victim of anti-intellectualism. As he chronicles Eban’s career, the author reveals fierce internal conflicts and rivalries: Eban made an enemy of Golda Meir early in his career; Yitzhak Rabin was Eban’s “biggest nemesis” for two decades; Moshe Dayan was “the most formidable of Eban’s political adversaries” in the 1960s. Eban consistently opposed military solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflicts. “Usually the dove is nicer than the hawk,” he said. “I haven’t found any reference in the Bible to a useful mission performed by a hawk.” Although often derided in Israel, Eban rose to prominence in the U.S., where he taught at Columbia, Princeton, and George Washington University and where he was a highly paid lecturer. In old age, when his cousin Oliver Sacks asked how he wanted to be remembered, Eban replied, “as a teacher.”
Based on interviews with dozens of people and research in more than 20 archival collections, Siniver’s sympathetic, cleareyed biography deserves to be called definitive.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0933-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
