Reviews for The lion's gate : on the front lines of the Six-Day War
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
The geopolitical effects of the Six Day War, in 1967, have continued to exert immense power over both the Middle East and the wider world. So it is useful to be reminded that the war was fought over relatively small territories by generally young and inexperienced men on both sides. Pressfield has compiled an impressive collection of firsthand accounts by many men and women who took part in the war on the Israeli side. Some of these recollections are from professional soldiers who were veterans of the Israeli War of Independence or the 1956 Sinai campaign. But most interesting and poignant are the accounts by youthful citizen-soldiers who reveal their fears, hopes, and even their impatience with their political leaders as their nation moves toward war. Of course, this is a highly skewed collection, since we hear nothing from Egyptians, Syrians, or Palestinians. Still, this is an effective recounting of soldiers thrust, in a compressed time span, into life-and-death situations for themselves and their nation.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2014 Booklist
Library Journal
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On June 5, 1967, Israel launched an attack against Egyptian forces that had been amassing at the border, and six days later Israel had defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and gained control of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, the Sinai peninsula, and Golan Heights. Pressfield (The War of Art) here attempts a "hybrid history" of the Six Day War by conducting scores of interviews with members of the Israel Defense Forces who participated in the conflict. The book is not a battle-by-battle account but rather a compilation of stories, some of them inconsistent, of the soldiers' experiences. Pressfield, who is not a historian, admits to "taking liberties," including adding material from previously published works to the interviews and documenting a conversation with a man who has been dead for more than 30 years, using the subject's memoir as well as Pressfield's "speculation." No context for the accounts is provided so readers without knowledge of the war may have difficulty understanding the discussions. Furthermore, rather than providing a new perspective on events, as many oral histories do, the text reads like a celebration of the Six-Day War. VERDICT While the individual stories included here can be compelling, the book leaves too many questions about its methodology unanswered and should be approached with caution.-Jason Martin, Stetson Univ. Lib., DeLand, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
