| Golda
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
As Israel's prime minister from 1969 to 1974, Golda Meir
(1898–1978) was recognized by her wrinkled face and gray bun. But,
Burkett (Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High
School) says in this sympathetic but balanced biography, the young
Meir was so strikingly attractive that detractors grumbled she had
slept her way up the political hierarchy. The rise of the
Russian-born, Milwaukee-bred Golda Mabovitz, however, was due to
her enormous popularity in the U.S. as a fund-raiser for a
struggling Jewish settlement in pre-statehood Palestine. |
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Meir was
politicized by memories of poverty and anti-Semitism in
czarist Russia and by a feisty, older sister who introduced
her to socialist Zionism. A Zionist pioneer, Meir secretly
negotiated with Jordan's King Abdullah before the U.N. vote to
partition Palestine; became a fervent supporter of Soviet
Jewry after her reluctant stint as Israel's first ambassador
to Moscow; and hesitantly approved the assassination of
Palestinian terrorists responsible for the massacre of Israeli
athletes at the Munich Olympics. Burkett says the price of
Meir's nonstop political life was rocky relationships with her
children and estranged husband. This is a solidly researched,
highly readable portrait of a mesmerizing but, according to
Burkett, ultimately lonely woman, though much of the material
is familiar. 8 pages of b&w photos.
(May) Copyright © Reed Business
Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
Product Description
The first female head of state in the Western world and one of
the most influential women in modern history, Golda Meir was a
member of the tiny coterie of founders of the State of Israel,
the architect of its socialist infrastructure, and its most
tenacious international defender. Her uncompromising devotion
to shaping and defending a Jewish homeland against dogged
enemies and skittish allies stunned political contemporaries
skeptical about |
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the stamina of an
elderly leader, and transformed Middle Eastern politics for decades to
follow.
A blend of Emma Goldman and Martin Luther King Jr. in the guise of a
cookie-serving grandmother, Meir was a tough-as-nails politician who
issued the first prescient warnings about the rise of international
terrorism, out-maneuvered Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger at their
own game of realpolitik, and led Israel through a bloody war even as
she eloquently pleaded for peace. A prodigious fundraiser and
persuasive international voice, Golda carried the nation through its
most perilous hours while she herself battled cancer.
In this masterful biography, critically acclaimed author and Pulitzer
Prize–nominated journalist Elinor Burkett looks beyond Meir's
well-known accomplishments to the complex motivations and ideals,
personal victories and disappointments, of her charismatic public
persona. Beginning with Meir's childhood in virulently anti-Semitic
Russia and her family's subsequent relocation to the United States,
Burkett places Meir within the framework of the American immigrant
experience, the Holocaust, and the single-mindedness of a generation
that carved a nation out of its own nightmares and dreams. She paints
a vivid portrait of a legendary woman defined by contradictions: an
iron resolve coupled with magnetic charm, an utter ordinariness of
appearance matched to extraordinary achievements, a kindly demeanor
that disguised a stunning hard-heartedness, and a complete dedication
to her country that often overwhelmed her personal relationships.
To produce this definitive account of Meir's life, Burkett mined
historical records never before examined by any researcher, and
interviewed members of Meir's inner circle, many going on record for
the first time. The result is an astounding portrait of one of the
most commanding political presences of the twentieth century—a woman
whose uncompromising commitment to the creation and preservation of a
Jewish state fueled and framed the ideological conflicts that still
define Middle Eastern relations today. |
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