Israel's current president gives us a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel's first prime minister and its founding father.
Shimon Peres has been president of the State of Israel since 2007.
In 1947, at David Ben-Gurion's request, he was recruited by the
Haganah, and he was appointed head of naval services in 1948. Over
a long and distinguished political career, he has held numerous
cabinet-level positions, including foreign minister and defense
minister, and served two terms as prime minister. One of the
architects of the Oslo Accords, he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1994.
David Landau was editor in chief of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
from 2004 to 2008. Before joining Haaretz in 1997, Landau was the
diplomatic correspondent and managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.
He is the author of Piety and Power- The World of Jewish
Fundamentalism and worked with Shimon Peres on his memoir, Battling
for Peace. He currently writes for The Economist.
“In revisiting the career of his mentor, Shimon Peres presents a
uniquely human portrait of David Ben-Gurion—a master strategist
with a long view of history and an abiding vision for Israel’s
future. Peres brings his nation’s founding father to life with the
energy, candor, and wisdom he’s become known for in his six decades
of public service.”
—William Jefferson Clinton
“Shimon Peres is a man of awesome accomplishment (a Nobel Peace
Prize-winner, by the way), but his most important accomplishment is
how he has come to personify the ethic that David Ben-Gurion
represents. His book is well worth your time. It was mine.”
—Richard Cohen, The Washington Post
“An urbane account of Israel’s first and longest-serving prime
minister by someone who, though nearly 40 years younger, worked
closely with him for two decades. It is admiring of
Ben-Gurion . . . but it never lapses into hero worship or loses its
grip on the historical realities amid which its story is set.
Peres’s personal reminiscences of Ben-Gurion and his entourage are
delightful.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Invaluable . . . Even readers tired of ideological food fights
about Israel—of liberals calling conservatives who defend the
country fascists, and of conservatives calling liberals who
criticize it anti-Semites—will find something to like in this
unusual primer on the birth of a nation and its most important
midwife.”
—Justin Moyer, The Washington Post
“Shimon Peres, the president (and former prime minister) of Israel,
provides an intriguing and intimate political biography of David
Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and Peres’s
erstwhile mentor. Readers will enjoy Peres’s analysis of his
relationship with Ben-Gurion and will find his humility
appealing. And his emotional admissions elevate this book
above a standard biography.”
—Publishers Weekly
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