A biography of Israel's founder and longest serving prime minister. Tom Segev's page-turning book casts the history of Israel and its founder in a bracing new light. Using previously unrevealed archival material, Segev demonstrates Ben-Gurion's power, skills and achievements, as well as his limitations and failures. He reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion's secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel's independence, his willingess to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbours, his relative indifference to the status of Jerusalem and Israel's nuclear programme, and his occassional nutty moments from UFO sightings to a plan for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Many admired Ben-Gurion in his day, and many now miss his vision and inspiration, his boldness and integrity. Others have vilified him as an aggressive, divisive, dour, and often capricious politician. But only a few have really grasped the most intimate and guarded aspects of his complex character, the man behind the myth.
