It was something of a quiet week for book releases. Still, here are some of this week's more notable book reviews found at other sites.
The Times of London has Zahava Scherz explain how the diary of her sister, Rutka Laskier, was discovered. Laskier's journal is being described as the new Diary of Anne Frank. "I am so glad I know this sister now. She wanted the world to read her diary because not only did it document what her life in Poland was like as a Jew during the war, but it was a testimony to the Holocaust, one of the darkest periods in history. One of the most important things about Rutka’s diary is that it proves the Holocaust happened to all those people who try to deny it. It is living, breathing and murdering in the pages of that diary." (link)
The same site also has a scathing review of the mega-selling Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Annie Proulx. "On the back of this book stands the opinion of no less an authority than Annie Proulx. Gilbert is 'a writer of incandescent talent'. The New York praises her 'mix of intelligence, wit and colloquial exuberance'. And so it goes on. I disagree. Strongly. This self-indulgent and self-important account of Gilbert’s self-discovery is utter guff. It is a waste of the recycled paper on which it is printed." (link)
Christianity Today has a review (of sorts) of Rhonda Byrne's bestselling The Secret. 'The Secret, you see, is all about the self--it's for the self, obsessed with the self. Newsweek offers this critique: 'On an ethical level, The Secret appears deplorable. It concerns itself almost entirely with a narrow range of middle-class concerns--houses, cars, and vacations, followed by health and relationships, with the rest of humanity a very distant sixth.'" (link)
The New York Times has a couple of interesting reviews. First is Ronald Reagan's The Reagan Diaries. "Except when Reagan was in the hospital, he produced an entry for each day, usually a page written in a clear hand with few portions crossed out. Brinkley, in his introduction, is broadly admiring of Reagan’s clarity and persistence... [P]olitical and historical implications abound. I voted for Ronald Reagan twice, and the diaries do not make me regret that I did, but his approach to his office had both strengths and weaknesses." (link)
Another interesting review is of 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East. "You need not agree with Mr. Segev’s conclusions on how things could have been done differently to benefit from his research and narrative. If you plan to read only one book on the 1967 war, this is not it. It is too narrowly focused. At the same time Mr. Segev makes a compelling and fresh case that the war was at least partly a result of a delicate and vulnerable moment in Israeli history, and his exploration of that moment is -- while too long -- persuasive and engaging." (link)
