A highly readable portrait of an enigmatic politician.
A biography of the steely Israeli prime minister that underscores his relentless, seemingly emotionless competitive drive.
As a translation from the Hebrew, this account of Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s career is nicely fluent. Longtime Israeli journalist and newscaster Caspit, a senior columnist for Ma’ariv, Israeli’s leading daily, is unafraid of criticizing the extreme right-wing views and single-minded ambition of this problematic public figure. Several themes emerge from the author’s chronicle of Netanyahu’s formative years in Jerusalem. One of the most prominent is the extreme reverence his family had to pay to his studious, humorless father, Benzion, a scholar inculcated in the Revisionist Zionist ideology: right-wing, leaning toward the American Republicans, and uncompromising toward Palestinians, all of which eventually formed the backbone of the Likud Party and encapsulated his son’s own views. Caspit touchingly emphasizes Netanyahu’s devotion to his older brother, Yoni, a shining, handsome role model and elite Israel Defense Forces commando like Bibi who was cut down tragically during the Entebbe Operation in 1976. Perhaps the most important lifelong influence on Netanyahu was his early education in America (MIT and Harvard), which taught him to speak flawless English and, as his career in politics grew, court rich American Jews into bankrolling rightist Jewish interests and his own campaigns. With his good looks and pedigree, he became the “perfect poster boy for the Jewish community” and gradually worked his way into the Israeli embassy and then head of the Likud Party. He would be elected prime minister four times (1996, 2006, 2013, 2015), matching David Ben-Gurion’s record. Caspit focuses on Netanyahu’s ongoing stormy relationship with Washington, D.C., as he has firmly maintained that “Israel and America were equal players in the international arena” and seemed mystified whenever this was challenged—e.g., from President Barack Obama over Iran nuclear concessions.
A highly readable portrait of an enigmatic politician.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08705-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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