RaveLondon Review of Books (UK)Segev...has no equal either for the brilliance of his storytelling or the ironies of his analysis. He is neither a sentimental apologist for Ben-Gurion nor a crusading dethroner in the style of the New Historians with whom he has often been grouped. He is, rather, a student of power, and is at once fascinated and horrified by what he sees ... For liberal Jews raised to think of Ben-Gurion as a grouchy but well-meaning patriarch, Segev’s biography will be particularly disillusioning, since he shows how central exclusionary nationalism, war and racism were to Ben-Gurion’s vision of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, and how contemptuous he was not only of the Arabs but of Jewish life outside Zion. They may look at the state that Ben-Gurion built, and ask if the cost has been worth it.
