Since the Yom Kippur War, the overwhelming amount of diplomatic “action” surrounding Israel has involved the US. But during the first half (1941—73) of the Jewish state’s existence, the European powers were crucial to its economic and military survival, as related here. Veteran scholar Sachar (Modern History/George Washington Univ.; Farewell Espa§a: The World of the Sephardim Remembered, 1994, etc.) rightly focuses almost exclusively on the four postwar European powers: Britain, France, West Germany, and the former USSR. Thus, for example, the Wiedergutmachung agreement (on reparations for the Holocaust), negotiated in 1952 between David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer, and bitterly opposed by Menachem Begin, was absolutely essential to the fledging state’s ability to absorb hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, develop new industry, and help tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors bear difficult economic conditions. Significant military aid from Bonn was forthcoming from the Adenauer era through that of Heinrich Kohl. In the mid-’50s, Paris helped Jerusalem to develop its air force and provided men and materials to build the country’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. Although he emphasizes diplomatic relations, including recently abortive European attempts to play a mediating role between Israel and the Palestinians, Sachar also probes the sharp upsurge in economic trade between Israel and the European Community, which has grown more than tenfold over the past 25 years. Unfortunately, too little here details the attitudes of major European intellectuals and religious leaders toward the Jewish state. In addition, Sachar’s pronounced “dovish” and anticlerical sentiments occasionally intrude, as when he asks: “Would the Israeli people survive a third generation only by maintaining a state of siege, retreating between a wall of parochialist suspicion and fundamentalist exclusivity?” However, these flaws pale in comparison to Sachar’s achievement: A solid, even pathbreaking book that covers a great deal of ground while remaining accessible to the general reader.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-45434-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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