Netanyahu: The Road to Power

Granted access to their subject and his diary, friends, political allies, and critics, two Israeli journalists present a biography of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, featuring revelations about his private and public life. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

The authors, who have written about former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and current Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, take the reader on a superficial tour of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's life. They focus on his influences: the extreme right-wing leanings of his family, the importance of America (where he twice lived for lengthy periods of time) and the death of his older brother in the 1976 Israeli rescue of hostages at the Entebbe airport. Caspit and Kfir show how Netanyahu's powerful ambition and strong work ethic helped propel him from a political attache at the Israeli Embassy and a frequent guest on ABC's Nightline in 1982 into the prime minister's office in 1996. To their credit, they mention his role in the inflammatory rhetoric that culminated in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, but otherwise there's little analysis. Shallow psychological diggings, such as that Netanyahu "was a 'middle child,' always struggling for his father's recognition and his mother's love," are left fallow. Other comments, such as that Netanyahu "was never the kind of man to pick up women," appear ludicrous in light of his three marriages and his celebrated affair in 1993 that caused a scandal in Israel and bears some similarities to Bill Clinton's current troubles. Netanyahu is often described as slick and lacking in profundity; unfortunately, this book fits that description as well.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Biographical, though not a full-fledged biography, this book by two Israeli journalists traces Bibi Netanyahu's life up to his election as Israel's prime minister in 1996. Caspit and Kfir cover the main influences on his life, such as the death of his brother during a hostage rescue, but these are nuggets amid quite a few tailings. In passages this book wanders about like a fan magazine, explaining Bibi's gustatory habits in one moment, extolling his political determination in another, and elsewhere trashing his wife as a tasteless parvenu. The nadir occurs in a page describing how Bibi met the crisis of a clerical error in one of his campaign letters. The authors' justification for reporting such trivia is that it shows lessons he learned in the army. Netanyahu's actual career in the army lends better perspective on his personality than any subsequent handling of letters, as the reader discovers in Bibi's firefights as a member of an antiterrorist unit. It's a patchy performance, but delivers enough basic biographical information to permit a recommendation. Gilbert Taylor