Riveting Reads From Nextbook and More
Book Review
There are publishers and there is
Nextbook.
And to read “Ben-Gurion A Political
Life” by Shimon Peres in Conversation with David Landau” ($25.95, 224
pages) and Deborah E. Lipstadt’s “The Eichmann Trial” ($24.95, 231
pages) is to be grateful that there is a publisher like Nextbook that
gives life to these two very important books.
The Ben-Gurion book has much that is
well known but also a great deal that is not. In the highly capable
hands of the man who has been president of the state of Israel since
2007 and who was a protégé of Ben-Gurion, a personage called Israel’s
Washington and Jefferson, we are there through the struggles and
triumphs, the momentous moments and the times of great despair. We are
there from the early days in Poland to the early days of creating the
State of Israel, to the remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish state
and the lion that was Ben-Gurion.
Highly readable, a page turner,
“Ben-Gurion A Political Life” brings back a complex and great leader and
his time and place. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED,
This year is the 50th anniversary of
“The Eichmann Trial” and Professor Lipstadt writing eloquently and
presenting new research on that moment in time covers all the bases. We
are there for the capture of Eichmann in Argentina, for the trial in
Israel (influenced from behind the scenes by Ben-Gurion), for the
testimony of survivors who found new lives after the Holocaust, to the
verdict and the execution of one of the most heinous human beings to
ever exist on this earth. Lipstadt spares no effort in putting forward
the story.
Moving, meticulously assembled, “The
Eichmann Trial” is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
“The Life of David” by Robert Pinsky
(Nextbook . Schocken, $12.95, 217 pages) is a deep and important tome.
It presents a portrait of its subject blending the life and the art of
David.
"Naked Hollywood: Weegee In Los
Angeles" by Richard Meyer (Skira/Rizzoli, 144 pages. $45.00) takes one
back to LA in the 1940s and 1950s. More than 200 images leap out at the
reader, all taken by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee. Previously a New York
City tabloid photographer, Fellig said: "Now I could really photograph
the subjects I liked, I was free." There is much to like about this
kind of garish, grotesque but absorbing opus - a world far different
than the world today, one shot at times through trick lenses and using
multiple exposures. If nostalgia is your thing, if a talented
photographer unleashed is your bag, this is your book.
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