bookshelf

THEODOR HERZL

Name: THEODOR HERZL
Author: Derek Penslar
ISBN: 978-0-300-18040-4

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER

by Derek Penslar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020

Comprehensive reading, travel, and imagination form a firm foundation for this swift, focused biography.

bookshelf

The compelling story of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), one of the primary leaders of the Zionist movement. Penslar, who teaches Jewish history at Harvard, reveals with thorough research and bright clarity that Herzl was an astonishing talent and a striking physical specimen with a resonant voice. He became a journalist for the Neue Freie Presse, “the most prestigious newspaper in Austria-Hungary,” as well as a successful novelist and playwright; Penslar summarizes much of that work—sometimes excessively so. After reviewing Herzl’s youth, the author focuses on his growing passion for Zionism, rise to fame, access to the principal players in European and Middle Eastern politics, and creation of political groups that elevated Zionism in the world’s consciousness. In 1949, Herzl’s remains were moved from Vienna to Israel, where Mount Herzl now rises over western Jerusalem, featuring the national cemetery. Penslar portrays his subject as a gifted and popular journalist who eventually became the paper’s literary editor and who managed to write prolifically despite his growing commitment to Zionism and the requirements of family. The author paints a painful picture of Herzl’s fraught relationship with his wife, Julie. (It was her family money that funded the freedom Herzl enjoyed.) Penslar also shows that Herzl was not a practicing Jew. Instead, he saw the various threats to Jews in Europe and looked for a place that might accept a mass immigration. He “fashioned himself as a certain kind of Jew—a member of a nation, yet liberal, cosmopolitan, and outward-looking; non-religious but respectful…proud to identify as a Jew in the face of ridicule and hatred.” Although Herzl didn’t live to see his dream realized, he has become a cultural icon—though, as the author notes, his fame is fading among the Israeli young. Penslar does not neglect Herzl’s problems, including a passion for the spotlight. Comprehensive reading, travel, and imagination form a firm foundation for this swift, focused biography.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-18040-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2020

Categories:

bookshelf

TOMBSTONE

THE EARP BROTHERS, DOC HOLLIDAY, AND THE VENDETTA RIDE FROM HELL

by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.

bookshelf

Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.

The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.

Pub Date: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4

Page Count: 400

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
BANDIT HEAVEN
by Tom Clavin

- BOOK REVIEW
THRONE OF GRACE
by Tom Clavin & Bob Drury

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST OUTLAWS
by Tom Clavin

bookshelf

THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

bookshelf

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.