Customer Reviews

Road to Peace: A Biography of Shimon Peres

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this book in a used book store for a dollar and decided might as well. I had been looking for some pre-revisionist histories of Israel and leading Israeli figures and assumed this would be perfect for that. In a lot of ways this book met my expectations, but in other ways it came up, surprisingly, short.

The book, as a pre-revisionist, history was just what I expected. It's very pro-Israel and tends to put a lot of blame on the Arabs and other nations for all the conflicts and the lack of successful peace negotiations. This was exactly what I wanted. I wanted the Israeli perspective, and I was interested primarily in the time before the organized peace movements really started to become a force. As far as that goes, the book was exactly what I wanted.

The other reason why I bought this particular work is because it was biography of Peres. A man instrumental in the forming and guiding of the Israeli state. He is also one of the Israeli political figures I admire the most, so I was uniquely interested in his story. Now I realize this book was short and I certainly did not expect a detailed account of his life and political career, but with that said I found this book to be severely lacking in some key areas as a biography, hence the three stars. I was interested in how the pre-state violence affected Peres' perspective as regards Arab relations. The book offered nothing on this, and as for the Yom Kippur war this book covered this period in about six pages. I was quite astounded at the shallowness of the authors coverage of this period. A period so profound and life altering for Israelis and their state. These two examples could be further expounded upon, but I will just say these problems were endemic of this work.

As I said before I didn't expect the definitive biography of this man form such a short work, but I also didn't expect the book to skim over such large swaths of important areas either. If you are like me and are looking for a pre-revisionist, pro-labour history to get a quick perspective then give this book a go, but this book is really only relevant within those very narrow confines.