Killing A King : The Assassination Of Yitzhak Rabin And The Remaking Of Israel
by Dan Ephron
On November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot in a Tel Aviv parking lot. It happened at the end of a peace rally. Yigal Amir had pulled the trigger, a Jew, not an Arab. Amir was furious with the Oslo Accord (Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Rabin agreed to a conciliation between the Arabs and the Jews) and felt that Rabin had betrayed Israel and its people. Amir had stalked Rabin for months and yet the agency that was supposed to protect Rabin missed many clues. It was a huge security blunder.
Rabin died and Amir went to prison for life.
Author Dan Ephron is supposed to be an award-winning writer (this is what is printed on the back flap under his photo), but I beg to differ. He is an investigative reporter, so you get a lot of detail, not all of it scintillating. Some sections are really deadening. Ephron was attempting to be fair-minded in his writing, but there is definitely a bias here.
The book is interesting enough to read about the Middle East process and all that Israel has gone through.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
The Sound Of Music Story : How A Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, And Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired The Most Beloved Film Of All Time
by Tom Santopietro
Having seen "The Sound of Music" so many times, I really thought that a book about making the movie would be very interesting. At times, it was. There's plenty of fascinating trivia, too. But, there's too much information that's really not necessary and then it becomes endless filler. The author writes about what happens to everybody in their lives that was involved with the film after the fact: the director, the screenwriter, the costume designer, the editor, all of the actors, and the von Trapps. It became deadening and the author's prose is quite dry. Because of this book, though, I became fascinated with the von Trapp family and wanted to know more about them. They were not too happy with the film, because it took too many liberties and what was portrayed was not even true. There's another movie that came out before "The Sound of Music" in German (you can watch it on YouTube with English subtitles) that is much more realistic of the von Trapps.
If you're an absolute fan, you will love this book. For the rest of us, it can be skipped.
by Tom Santopietro
Having seen "The Sound of Music" so many times, I really thought that a book about making the movie would be very interesting. At times, it was. There's plenty of fascinating trivia, too. But, there's too much information that's really not necessary and then it becomes endless filler. The author writes about what happens to everybody in their lives that was involved with the film after the fact: the director, the screenwriter, the costume designer, the editor, all of the actors, and the von Trapps. It became deadening and the author's prose is quite dry. Because of this book, though, I became fascinated with the von Trapp family and wanted to know more about them. They were not too happy with the film, because it took too many liberties and what was portrayed was not even true. There's another movie that came out before "The Sound of Music" in German (you can watch it on YouTube with English subtitles) that is much more realistic of the von Trapps.
If you're an absolute fan, you will love this book. For the rest of us, it can be skipped.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)