Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin - Hardcover

Kurzman, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060186844 ISBN 13: 9780060186845

Publisher: Harper, 1998

Synopsis

The bestselling, award-winning author of Fatal Voyage and Gensis 1946 presents a comprehensive biography of Yitzhaz Rabin that will publish to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

In the mots revealing portrait of the late Israeli leader writer to date, and the first to examine Rabin's longtime secret contacts with the PLO, Rabin family friend, confidante, and former Washington Post correspondent Dan Kurzman explores the life and work of the former Israeli prime minister. Tracing Rabin's life from his youth as a member of an elite commando unit to his rise as leader of Israel, and the account of his brutal assassination at the hands of a right-wing Jewish extremist, Kurzman details Rabin's evolution from shy child to desert warrior to peacemaker, and in the process tells the story of a nation's maturation into a modern state striving for peace.

Kurzman draws both on his relationship with Rabin, whom he first knew as a reporter's source during the Six Day War, and from interviews he conducted with more tan 200 people, including top politicians and statesmen from Shimon Peres to Henry Kissinger. It is the most complete portrait yet published of one of the twentieth century's most courageous and visionary statesman.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Kurzman, a former Washington Post correspondent, is the author of fourteen books and the winner of five literary and journalistic awards: The George Polk Memorial Award; the National Jewish Award; the Newspaper Guild's Front Page Award; and, twice, the Cornelius Ryan Award for the year's best book on foreign affairs. Kurzman is a native of San Francisco and now makes his home in New Jersey.

Reviews

Kurzman's biography of Rabin is serviceable, even if it does not stray beyond the eminently familiar. The problem with it is that Kurzman is engaged in hero-worshipping more than in a dispassionate account of the man's life.

A worthwhile review of the life of the late Israeli leader by an award-winning journalist, but it sheds little new light on one of the more intriguing personalities of the last 50 years. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, was almost the anti-politician. He was blunt, honest, and dour, didnt tailor his remarks or his persona to his audience, and seemed always to be precisely as he presented himself. Thus, former Washington Post correspondent Kurzman (Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler's Bomb, 1996, etc.) undertook a difficult task in attempting to explain what made Rabin tick, and he mostly disappoints in the effort. Kurzman's central thesis is that it was Rabin's anguish at sending so many soldiers to die as a general that led him to become a peacemaker in his two stints as prime minister, and that Rabin always had an eye to making peace possible even as, in a range of key roles, he was building Israel's armed forces into a fearsome fighting machine. But Rabin presented this same thesis in his own memoirs, while illuminating as little as Kurzman the complexities of his character. Only in the last hundred pages, which draw on Kurzmans access to many of the key players surrounding Rabin as he stunned Israel and the world by making peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization, does this biography finally come to multidimensional life. The chapter on the hours immediately preceding Rabin's assassination is the best one here, and a frustrating sample of what the rest of the book might have been. We are left wanting to know more about Rabin and the pioneering, native-born Israelis with whom his life is so intimately intertwined (the publication date coincides with Israel's 50th birthday). Rabin may have shown all his cards all the time, but one senses there are more complex explanations than those offered here for such a seemingly simple approach to life. (16 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Brusque, taciturn, but deeply emotional about the cost of war, "Mr. Security," as was Rabin's moniker in Israel, was a complicated figure. Eminent as the architect of salvation in the Six Day War, Rabin left a controversial legacy in some quarters for his decision to concede some aspects of the victory to obtain a settlement with the Palestinians. Thus, a definitive biography is premature, but intense interest in him will not stay the hands of authors. As a reading experience, Kurzman's book poses various impediments, such as digressions describing what Rabin wore to functions. The political events of Rabin's career are difficult to keep track of, as the author favors recollected conversations over clear analysis of Rabin's two stints as Israeli prime minister. However, readers intrigued by the inner life masked by Rabin's dour visage can pluck from a cornucopia of chronological anecdotes concerning his upbringing and emotions, constructed from scores of interviewees. This is an admiring interim work with pluses and minuses. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060186844
• ISBN 13: 9780060186845
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576