"One of the great statesmen of our century, Shimon Peres, winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, has shaped the history of Israel and the future of the Middle East. In the seventies, as Israel's minister of defense, he engineered the legendary Entebbe raid against PLO terrorists; in the eighties, as prime minister, he saved the Israeli economy from near collapse; and as foreign minister, Shimon Peres is now a key negotiator in the peace accords that he helped bring about. In Battling for Peace, he tells, for the first time, the story of his amazing career. As we follow Peres from his ancestral home in Poland to Israel, from the youth village of Ben-Shemen to Kibbutz Alumot, from youth movement leader to prime minister, we are introduced both to a man and to a nation. A thoughtful, disciplined, and immensely resourceful young man, Peres was singled out by Israel's great leader David Ben-Gurion, who appointed him, while still in his twenties, director general of the Ministry of Defense. From this point on, Peres's life was inseparable from his country's history. Peres writes of his bitter quarrels with Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, and of his great admiration for Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Francois Mitterrand. He discusses the origins of Israel's nuclear program, and tells how he led the way toward the Oslo agreement, describing his secret talks with King Hussein in London ten years ago, and revealing how a chance for peace was thwarted by self-serving politicians and timid American diplomacy"--OCLC

A Personal Account of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotiations [Sep 01, 1981] Dayan, Moshe

When Armand Hammer died at the age of 92, he was chairman of the Occidental Petroleum Company, lauded for his financial support of cancer research and for his art collection. But behind the facade of respectability lay a lifetime of fraud, both personal and professional. Now, the bestselling author of The Assassination Chronicles reveals the true story of this manipulative and corrupt man. of photos.

Biography of Israeli Moshe Dayan, covering his personal life, military service, public career, and political controversies.

Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery. How could a man as gifted as Benjamin, knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices, not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself, a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not, or could not, question the practice on which his own success, and that of the South, was founded.

184 pages. Ex-Library. Book is in Very good condition throughout. This Book Presents Six Short Biographies, Political Portraits Of Men Who At Dfferent Times Were In Stalin's Immediate Entourage.

Hungary's War of Independence was the bloodiest conflict of the European revolutionary era, exciting nationalist passions that burn hot till this day. The story of this dramatic time unfolds through the towering personality of Louis Kossuth--a principal actor in the dramatic events. He and his fellow noblemen sized the opportunity offered by the continent's upheavals to restore Hungary's sovereignty under the Habsburg Crown. They introduced many administrative, social, and economic reforms...only to run into the opposition of many of the country's most powerful forces. In 1949, Kossuth fled--never to return home again.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan may be best known as a statesman. He served in the administrations of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford; was ambassador to India and the United Nations; and represented New York in the U.S. Senate for 4 terms. But he was also an intellectual of the first order, whose books and papers on topics ranging from welfare policy and ethnicity in American society to international law stirred debate and steered policy. Moynihan was, journalist Michael Barone remarked, the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson. He was, Greg Weiner argues, Americas answer to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish scholar-statesman Edmund Burke. In its incisive analysis of Moynihans political thought, American Burke lays out the terms for such a recovery. The book traces Moynihans development through the broad sweep of his writings and career. The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society, Moynihan once wrote. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. In his ability to embrace both of these truths, this American Burke makes it bracingly clear that a wise political thinker can also be an effective political actor, and that commitments to both liberal and conservative values can coexist peaceably and productively. Weiners work is not only a thorough and thoroughly engaging intellectual exploration of one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century; it is also a timely prescription for the healing of our broken system.

Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was, during his lifetime, one of Europe's most famous men. A friend of Pope Urban VIII and Galileo, of Peter-Paul Rubens and Hugo Grotius, of Tommaso Campanella and Marin Mersenne, Peiresc played an important role in the intellectual culture of his time. This book is the first study in English of this extraordinary man, as well as a vivid portrait of his whole circle. Looking through the lens of Peiresc's life, Peter N. Miller brings into focus the early-seventeenth-century world of learning--its people, places, and ideas. Drawing on the extensive Peiresc archive (more than 50,000 pieces of paper), Miller brilliantly evokes the lives of antiquaries, philosophers, theologians, and politicians of Peiresc's day, only some of whom remain known today. He explores the age in which Peiresc's toleration and sociability, his political action and cosmopolitanism, and his serious scholarship without dogmatism were identified as a set of virtues and practices by which to live. Peiresc's notion of scholarship as a moral exercise, the sweep of his interests, and the cross-Continental reach of his intellectual life show with new clarity what it meant to be a man of learning during the decades around 1600.

"The revealing memoir of one of Israeli's most respected statesmen. Moshe Arens is one of the last surviving members of the founding generation of Israelis. He is a political insider who has worked with every Israeli prime minister from Menachem Begin to Benjamin Netanyahu, serving in a variety of important positions, including foreign minister and defense minister. He has also enjoyed an exceptionally close life-long relationship with the United States: he attended high school in New York and colleges in Massachusetts and California, married an American, and served as Israel's ambassador to the United States. In this memoir, Arens recounts his early role in the birth of Israel and developing Israel's aerospace industry, followed by a long and distinguished political career that included service at the very top of Israel's government for the better part of three decades. Arens advocated relentlessly throughout his political career for his vision of an Israel strong enough to withstand all challenges in its volatile neighborhood. In Defense of Israel vividly recounts the many battles Arens fought in the political arena, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The latter included his strong opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank--an action that led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Anyone interested in Israel's place within the contemporary Middle East, including Israel's relationship with the United States, will find this memoir informative, even eye-opening, and often provocative."--

This delightful book is a collection of incidental pieces that reveal little-known aspects of the life and personality of Benjamin Franklin. Written by the doyenne of Franklin scholars, it conveys Franklin's humor, resiliency, courage, and intelligence, and his faith in a better future. The selections are based on Claude-Anne Lopez's research in the treasure trove of nearly thirty thousand documents on Franklin assembled at Yale University. They include a detailed refutation of an anti-Semitic forgery attributed to Franklin and currently circulating on the Internet; three mini-detective stories showing Franklin on the fringes of the espionage world; discussions of Franklin's efforts to outfit Washington's army and to choose the first dinner set for the Foreign Service; and the tale of the misadventures of a French utopian scheme he sponsored. The only piece of fiction in the book is an imaginary party during which, on the first anniversary of his death, six illustrious Frenchmen discuss Franklin's influence on their country. Lopez has provided brief personal introductions to each of the pieces, giving her reasons for writing them and in the process threading the essays together.

When Zionists first advocated a national home for the Jewish people, they also propounded a revolution in the values that Jews should live by, a whole new way of thinking about Jewish life and Jewish history. Has this revolution in fact occurred? And what the consequences been for Jews and their neighbors? Especially given the extraordinary circumstances that link the United States and Israel, Americans may find the answers to such questions vexing - but the remarkable work of Avishai Margalit goes far to clarify the issues and enlighten the debate. Over the past two decades, Margalit has written major essays for American readers about the political leaders, cultural crises, and historical background of the contemporary Israeli scene. In Views in Review these essays are brought together with new commentary and observations, and their publication in one volume clearly shows that the whole is much more that the sum of its parts. From Ben Gurion to Netanyahu, from "Israeli kitsch" to the meaning of the Holocaust for "the seventh million," Margalit's work traverses the terrain of Israeli life and history and brings a tragically conflicted country into sharp and memorable focus.

"A translation of a biography of the Athenian general Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly, a French scholar and member of the French Academy"--