Begin: A Biography.

In this first comprehensive, independent biography, Eric Silver examines the question: what motivated Begin? He traces the roots of Begin's stubborn, assertive Jewish nationalism from its origins in the East European ghetto: the proudly Zionist father; the ideology and allure of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the fighter and prophet; the twin traumas of the Nazi Holocaust, in which Begin lost his parents and elder brother, and incarceration by the Soviet secret police; the Irgun Zvai Leumi's revolt against British rule in Palestine; the long, often bitter, struggle of the 'other Zionism' and the 'other Israel' against the hegemony of the Labour Party.