Thursday, September 16, 2010

Begin's Memoiries - and Rabin's, and Even Kissinger's

Lee Smith has read Yehuda Avner's new book The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, and describes it at length. Avner worked closely with Levy Eshkol, Golda Meir, Ytzchak Rabin, and Menachem Begin, and kept piles of notes upon which he based this book. Lee says that it's all fascinating, but that Begin towers above all the others.

Yet another book we've got to read, I guess.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read Lee's description last night and it certainly made my mouth water

but talking about books in another context I looked up the Victorian Brit's favourite travel guide and found the one for the grand-tourers for your area is from 1868 and abebooks has a scanned reprint for less than $ 25
I've got the edition for Greece and Turkey, enjoyment pure

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=2417652637&searchurl=tn%3DHandbook%2Btravellers%2BSyria%2BPalestine

Silke

Anonymous said...

Silke,

The item you link to is a print-on-demand book, and so it is likely it will be missing the maps. Possibly worth paying a few pounds more to get the fold-out maps as well?

Victoria

Anonymous said...

Victoria
my reprint of the 1845 for Greece and Turkey doesn't seem to miss any maps and certainly has no fold-outs. It is a pretty primitive affair the way we know it from Goodle books. Mine has even scribbled in handwritings.

At amazon there seemed only antiquarian reprints on offer except one to which the publishing house www.kessinger.net linked and that is labelled part 2

amazon also has an antiquarian one on offer for $ 100.--, that was the one I compared to the abebooks price.

So in case you go for it, don't hope for something fancy ;-)

Silke

david brumer said...

Beautiful book.
Revealing insights into behind the scenes moments of nascent and developing Jewish state.
One comes away with a deep appreciation of Begin's depth, grace and stature.
He radiated hadar, as Avner aptly puts it.
Truly the last of the patriachs.