Yonaton Netanyahu, Yoni, was the 30-year-old leader of the Israeli force that rescued the hostages at Entebbe and he was its only casualty. His mission and his death made him a national hero in Israel and this book, unabashedly the story of a hero, describes with dignity and restraint who he was and what he came to represent. Restraint might seem misplaced in a tale of twelve years of rescues, raids, defenses, and attacks, each of which calls for the whole list of heroic adjectives. Yet it seems appropriate to a soldier who was an avid chess player and had spent several semesters studying philosophy and mathematics at Harvard. His greatest devotion, however, was to the land of Israel and to "Zahal"—its uniquely individualistic defense force. He wrote to his parents in America, "In this country, at this moment, being in the army means to be inside"—outside lay bureaucracy, corruption, and shoddiness. "In Israel, if you want to see creative brilliance, look for it in the army." Rising from the ranks, like all Israeli officers, Yoni gained experience in the paratroops, special forces, and armored commands. The spirit and direction of the army is traced through his career from the exuberance of the mid-Sixties, to the overwhelming confidence after the Six Day War, and then to the war of attrition and the near-disaster of 1973. Finally even Netanyahu, to whom the army was a home, "lost faith in the power of Zahal alone to preserve Israel from her enemies." The mission to Entebbe did much to rebuild that faith. Hastings' admittedly censored account offers few new details of the raid, but it does deal in a limited way with the lack of military preparedness in 1973, the blunders on Mount Hermon, and the subsequent demoralization of the army. Although he ignores the price the Arabs paid, Hastings implies through Yoni's story that the profound personal and cultural costs of being a nation at war may not always be redeemed by victory. It is a one-sided tale, but it is a side well told.
Pub Date: July 1, 1979
ISBN: 0297775650
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1979
A serviceable biography of the black attorney/businessman whose accomplishments set a challenging standard for tycoons of any ethnic background. Before he died of brain cancer at age 50 early in 1993, Lewis had partially completed a memoir of his remarkable life and career. Drawing on these jottings, as well as on extensive interviews with his subject's close-knit family, friends, and associates, USA Today correspondent Walker offers a warts-and-all portrait of an irresistible force. From his East Baltimore boyhood on, the ultra- industrious Lewis planned, even schemed, to make himself a world- class success. Barely an average student at Virginia State, he finessed his way into Harvard Law School without even taking the entrance exam. After a two-year stint with the top-drawer Manhattan firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he struck out on his own. Serving a lengthy apprenticeship as a specialist in minority- enterprise small-business-investment corporations, Lewis learned enough to become a player in the great takeover game that preoccupied Wall Street during the 1980s. After a couple of false starts, he masterminded a leveraged buyout of McCall Pattern Co., which in a few years yielded him and fellow investors a 90-to-1 return. With a little help from his friend Michael Milken, he went on to engineer another coup—the LBO for nearly one billion dollars of Beatrice International Foods. At the time of his death, Lewis had the Paris-based enterprise operating on an enviably profitable basis throughout Europe. This account of Lewis's achievements emphasizes his tough- minded, goal-oriented approach to personal and philanthropic as well as financial affairs. (16 pages of 28 photos, not seen) (First serial to Black Enterprise)
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-04227-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
An intimate, sometimes striking photo-essay detailing the folkways of the Samburu, a warrior-based society of northern Kenya. Magor, a Kenyan-born model who studied design in England, lived among the Samburu for six years, recording the daily rhythms and significant ceremonies of this traditional culture, whose members depend on herds of cattle, goats, and camels for their survival. Living in semi-arid scrublands, the Samburu follow rigidly circumscribed patterns that dictate age- and gender-based divisions of labor, family and social organization, and the timing and enactment of rites of passage. The book's principle focus is on lmurran, the young warriors whose duties are to guard the community and its herds. Flamboyantly attired in ivory earrings, colored beads, bracelets, and feathers, their faces and upper bodies smeared with red ocher, they are photographed leaning upon their spears, chanting and leaping during a warrior's dance, and slitting a cow's vein for blood (which, along with milk and meat, forms the diet of the Samburu). Having gained the trust of her subjects, Magor photographed the circumcision rights performed on teenage boys, as well as the preparations for and aftermath of female circumcision performed on young girls before marriage. These pictures and their accompanying captions may be jarring to Western sensibilities, but Magor's writing is dispassionate and informative. Her camera also chronicles wedding ceremonies; rituals denoting the passage from warrior status to elder status (at which time a man can marry and take part in council meetings); and, poignantly, a private ceremony performed on a riverbank by a mother whose son is ready to move from her home. Also photographed or described are the more prosaic features of Samburu life: care of livestock, the hierarchial arrangement of huts in the villages based on the status of the elders, and the harsh but beautiful Kenyan landscape. With over 200 color photos, this is a well-documented record of one of the last remaining societies of its kind.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8109-1943-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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