A concise history by an author confident with his scope and authority—but beware that van Creveld has a considerable axe to...
An authoritative history, and glib patriotic defense, by a veteran historian of Israel.
Van Creveld (The Culture of War, 2008, etc.) provides a no-nonsense survey of the establishment of Israel, continually reminding readers of the “amazing” success story of the country and its need to stand up in the face of “endless and often highly unfair criticism.” Without getting bogged down in details, the author fashions five sweeping chapters in which to group the great events of the nation’s founding. “Forged in Fury” moves from the rise of Zionism both as a growth of Jewish self-identity in the West and a reaction against anti-Semitism, especially after the Dreyfus Affair. Pogroms in Russia prompted the first migrations, often by young socialists, while the Balfour Declaration of 1917 assured a “national home for the Jewish people” as a bulwark against Ottoman rule. Van Creveld charges briskly through the early clashes with the Arabs as Jewish emigration grew, the strengthening of the military into the Israel Defense Forces and the defeat of the combined Arab armies in 1948, which gave rise to the great myth of Israel’s fight for existence, “a miracle beyond compare.” In “Full Steam Ahead,” the author explores the rocky consolidation of government especially in terms of the place of religion and the creation of a viable economy. “The Nightmare Years” ensued when Israel’s attempted transformation of the Middle East after the 1967 war rendered it a world pariah, until the Camp David Accords opened prospects for peace. The final two chapters, “New Challenges” and “Tragedy, Triumph and Struggle,” delineate the failed reactions to subsequent Palestinian uprisings and changes in leadership, and consider important currents in the economy, feminism, education, cultural life and Americanization of society. In concluding remarks, van Creveld admits frankly that if Israel wants a “to lead a ‘normal’ life in accordance with its own basic values,” it has to deal with the Palestinians. However, the author lectures readers rather gallingly that Israeli Arabs have it better in Israel than in most Arab countries.
A concise history by an author confident with his scope and authority—but beware that van Creveld has a considerable axe to grind.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-59678-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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