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MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLO

POLICY AND POLITICS IN THE RABIN GOVERNMENT

Jerusalem Post and U.S. News and World Report correspondent Makovsky's probing examination of how the 1993 accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) came to be. Makovsky's book is part journalism, part textbook. The journalistic part, and the meat of the book, is the author's step-by-step account of the secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO that began in January 1993 and culminated in the September 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn. Relying primarily on interviews with key players, Makovsky has pieced the process together in exhaustive detail. Among his revelations is the failure—could it have been deliberate?—of US officials to follow up on numerous hints that the secret talks were going on. He also reveals the intricacies of Israeli negotiating tactics, including withholding recognition of the PLO until the last minute to extract the most possible concessions. More textbookish is Makovsky's examination—mostly from the Israeli point of view—of the politics, personalities, and history that made the clandestine talks possible; readers who have closely followed events in the Middle East will find this section to be a rehash of numerous op-ed and analysis pieces. Tying the two parts together is Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Makovsky offers extensive documentation to show that Rabin was far more involved in the talks than has been generally reported; the author then explores at length the political and personal reasons why the prime minister reversed his seemingly adamant position against negotiating with the PLO. By gathering a great deal of information in one place— including an appendix containing copies of crucial documents—and revealing some new facts, Makovsky provides a valuable resource for writers and researchers interested in the details of Middle East peacemaking.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-8133-2425-4

Page Count: 241

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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