PublishedRandom House, February 2014 |
ISBN9781400042418 |
FormatHardcover, 656 pages |
Dimensions23.5cm × 15.9cm × 4.3cm |
From the former editor in chief of Haaretz, the first in-depth, comprehensive biography of Ariel Sharon, the most dramatic and imposing Israeli political and military leader of the last forty years. The life of Ariel Sharon spans much of modern Israel s history.
A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, Sharon participated in the 1948 War of Independence, played decisive roles in the 1956 Suez War and the Six-Day War of 1967, and is credited here with the shift in the outcome of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. After leaving the professional army, Sharon became a political leader and served in numerous governments, most prominently as the defense minister during the 1982 Lebanon War in which he bore personal responsibility, according to the state s commission of inquiry, for massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese militia. As a general and as a politician, he championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But as prime minister, he performed a dramatic reversal: orchestrating Israel s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Landau brilliantly chronicles Sharon s surprising about-face, combining the immediacy of firsthand reportage with the analysis and independent insight of a historian s perspective. Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006 and remains in a persistent vegetative state. This biography recounts the life of the man who is considered by many to be Israel s greatest military leader and political statesman, illustrating how Sharon s leadership transformed Israel, and how his views were shaped by the changing nature of Israeli society."
