Sharon

July 15, 2002
Readers will be left frustrated by the lack of psychological insight in this detailed but unsatisfying biography of controversial Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. The book's strength is in its early pages, where the authors detail Sharon's youth. He was born in 1928 to a strongly individualist father who had moved to Palestine from the Soviet Union. The authors (Anita Miller is a literary scholar, Jordan Miller a poet and playwright, Zetouni a director of Olive Production and a contributing editor to Chicago Life
magazine) also lay out clearly Sharon's early rise through the Israeli army—and his developing reputation as a loose cannon. The book competently describes the notorious 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian troops, for which an Israeli commission later found Sharon indirectly responsible. But three-quarters of the book is devoted to the past decade—the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process and the second Palestinian intifada—and Sharon's role in these events. There are few revelations here, and little attempt is made to probe Sharon's motivations, for example the possible effects of the personal tragedies he's suffered—the early deaths of his first wife and his first-born son. A figure as important and complex as Sharon deserves a more sophisticated treatment. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)Forecast:Despite its flaws, many trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will turn to this, which the publisher says is the first English-language biography of Sharon.

September 1, 2002
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been a hard-line fixture of Israeli politics since he retired from the army in 1974 after approximately 30 years of service. He has promoted the expansion of settlements as a way of solidifying control over the occupied territories and consistently advocated a policy of retaliation against Arab villages when Israeli settlements in the territories or in Israel proper have been attacked. Not truly a biography, this work spotlights Sharon's public career as he wended his way through recent history; two-thirds of the text is devoted to the eight years since the Oslo Accords of 1993. Miller (Arnold Bennett: An Annotated Bibliography, 1897-1932) draws solely on news stories and secondary sources, providing little behind-the-scenes material about his public life or information about his private life. Sharon's autobiography, Warrior, appeared 13 years ago, and while the new work does provide a summary update of his career since, it offers very little else and stops before the latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East. A marginal purchase.-Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York

September 1, 2002
For most of the past three decades, Ariel Sharon operated close to the levers of military and political power in Israel without having the freedom to manipulate those levers himself. Now, with his domestic popularity surging, it appears likely that he will have that freedom for the immediate future. This is the first biography of Sharon in English, and the authors have provided a comprehensive examination of his life from his youth to the present time. We learn much about Sharon's activities as a young defender of his family's farm, his role in the War of Independence, and of course, his activities as an important military and political figure over the last thirty years. This study asserts that Sharon is far more complicated and savvy than his public persona suggests. Unfortunately, it reveals little about Sharon's "inner life" or his long-term vision (if he has one) for a just settlement with the Palestinians. Still, this is a necessary and well-written look at the career of a man who will remain at the center of the Middle Eastern turmoil for a while.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)