An overlong recounting of a long-past Israeli political scandal. Teveth is a former political correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and the biographer of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion (Ben Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1987). This new book's subtitle suggests a Watergate-like event, but the Lavon Affair—covered here in exhausting detail—does not seem to have permanently sullied Ben-Gurion's reputation or the fortunes of his political heirs, including Shimon Peres, the current prime minister. This 1950s scandal originated with shady operatives picked by Ben-Gurion's defense minister, Pinhas Lavon. The heavies are unscrupulous scamps like the head of Israeli intelligence, Binyamin Givly, and playboy/double agent Avri Elad, whose rashness, incompetence, and immorality led to a bombing campaign in Egypt in 1954 that had damaging repercussions for Israel, and to the deaths of several agents spying for Israel in Egypt. While Lavon and Ben- Gurion are ultimately responsible for the controversial acts of sabotage in Egypt, they seem too far up the chain of command to be considered active conspirators in these events. Teveth thinks otherwise and also insists that ``there is enough evidence to prove that without the Lavon Affair, Menahem Begin's Likud Party would not have come to power.'' But, as he admits, Labor's decline is widely linked to unpreparedness for the Yom Kippur War. Teveth is more on target when he credits the scandal with preventing the army and intelligence services from getting too independent and powerful. Compelling characters like Elad and the loyal army secretary who lies for generals and prime ministers (and lies down with them) offer dramatic potential, but the possibilities are not exploited by Teveth's flat writing style.
Pub Date: June 13, 1996
ISBN: 0-231-10464-2
Page Count: 297
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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