A cleareyed study that sounds a serious alarm for the future of Israel—a must for any library’s collection on the conflict.
Evenhanded summary of Arab-Israeli relations since the beginning of the Zionist settlements 100 years ago.
“For the past fifty years,” writes Slater, a retired political science professor, “I have been studying, teaching, and writing about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and have many close connections in that country.” In this highly valuable contribution to the subject, the author combs secondary sources—he does not read Hebrew but notes that most studies are translated immediately into English—offering a "work of synthesis and interpretation of the existing literature." Slater is especially influenced by the so-called new historians such as Ilan Pappé, Benny Morris, and Avi Shlaim, and he essentially provides a systematic refutation of Abba Eban's famously snide 1973 comment: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” As Slater points out, along with Israeli aggression in the region, the U.S. has become a willing and noncritical ally. The author first debunks the myths that both Israel and the U.S. have long held regarding the founding of Israel—e.g., the "underdog" argument, the religious argument, and "Arab intransigence" argument, among others. Writing about the nature of Zionism, he shows that, “despite the Israeli mythology, the evidence is irrefutable that [David] Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders were not willing to compromise over Palestine and therefore 'accepted' the 1947 UN partition plan only as a temporary tactic to gain time until Israel was strong enough to take over all of Palestine." Moving meticulously through the many relevant conflicts—1948, 1956, 1967, the Cold War, and wars with Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt—to the present, the author argues convincingly that Israeli officials have often worked from a policy of deliberate provocation. Slater concludes with the Trump plan, which makes a two-state solution nearly impossible.
A cleareyed study that sounds a serious alarm for the future of Israel—a must for any library’s collection on the conflict.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-045908-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
An erudite guide to the biblical world.
Revelations from the Old Testament.
“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know,” observes Calasso (1941-2021), the acclaimed Italian publisher, translator, and explorer of myth, gods, and sacred ritual. In this probing inquiry into biblical mysteries, the author meditates on the complexities and contradictions of key events and figures. He examines the “enigmatic nature” of original sin in Genesis, an anomaly occurring in no other creation myth; God’s mandate of circumcision for all Jewish men; and theomorphism in the form of Adam: a man created in the image of the god who made him. Among the individuals Calasso attends to in an abundantly populated volume are Saul, the first king of Israel; the handsome shepherd David, his successor; David’s son Solomon, whose relatively peaceful reign allowed him “to look at the world and study it”; Moses, steeped in “law and vengeance,” who incited the slaughter of firstborn sons; and powerful women, including the Queen of Sheba (“very beautiful and probably a witch”), Jezebel, and the “prophetess” Miriam, Moses’ sister. Raging throughout is Yahweh, a vengeful God who demands unquestioned obedience to his commandments. “Yahweh was a god who wanted to defeat other gods,” Calasso writes. “I am a jealous God,” Yahweh proclaims, “who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, as far as the third and fourth generations.” Conflicts seemed endless: During the reigns of Saul and David, “war was constant, war without and war within.” Terse exchanges between David and Yahweh were, above all, “military decisions.” David’s 40-year reign was “harrowing and glorious,” marked by recurring battles with the Philistines. Calasso makes palpable schisms and rivalries, persecutions and retributions, holocausts and sacrifices as tribal groups battled one another to form “a single entity”—the people of Israel.
An erudite guide to the biblical world.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60189-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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