Michael Bar-Zohar

Twice Israel's prime minister, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, bold leader in a war-torn region, Shimon Peres is one of the great statesmen of the modern world. Peres is also a fascinating, complex man--a brilliant intellectual who is entirely at home in the corridors of power; an individual revered by the world and yet highly controversial in his own country; at once a hero and a figure of tragedy. Now, in this definitive biography, Michael Bar-Zohar takes the full measure of a towering, enigmatic leader.Drawing on his decades-long association with Peres, as well as the full cooperation of the leader's family, friends, supporters, and political rivals, Bar-Zohar has crafted a vibrant, daring, richly textured portrait of a man whose life and career span the entire history of Israel. Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to the Holy Land at the age of twelve, already a fiercely idealistic Zionist. Peres joined a kibbutz and, while still in his teens, became the leader of a major youth movement. When the struggle for Israeli independence broke out, future prime minister David Ben-Gurion tapped him to join his inner circle. As director general of the Defense Ministry under Ben-Gurion, Peres spearheaded a far-reaching campaign to turn Israel into a major military power. He jump-started Israel's aircraft industry, forged a secret alliance with France, and successfully pursued his dream of making Israel a nuclear power. And yet Peres's real triumph came not as a man of war but as a peacemaker. Elected prime minister in 1984, Peres brought new hope by pulling Israeli troops out of the quagmire in Lebanon, defusing tensions with Jordan, and, at the risk of his own political future, making serious overtures to the Palestinians. Peres and his longtime rival Yitzhak Rabin together secured the top-secret Oslo Accords of 1993, which won them and Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize--only to see the hope of peace shattered in a resurgence of regional violence.In a half-century of leadership, Peres has worked beside--or fought against--such giants as Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, and, tragically, Rabin, who was slain at the rally that marked his reconciliation with Peres. Still powerful in his eighties, Peres stands as a true hero, a visionary who embodies the history of his nation. In this stunning, courageously frank, and scrupulously factual biography, Michael Bar-Zohar gives an eminent man his due.From the Hardcover edition.

Chronicles the actions of "public and private individuals ... who independently risked their lives for the rights of others" and earned Bulgaria the distinction of being "the only Axis-aligned country not to deport its Jews." Despite the formation of a pro-Nazi government and their own version of the Nuremberg laws, "not one Bulgarian Jew ever left the country."--Jacket.

The business of L'Oreal is beauty. It is the world's largest cosmetics firm. This startling book shows the other face of beauty. It is the story of how this giant company became a haven for ex-Nazis. It reveals the illegal alliance the L'Oreal forged with the Arab Boycott Bureau. And it brings to light the secret link between the L'Oreal high command and the President of France himself, Francois Mitterrand - a link cast in the darkness of the Nazi past. Above all, it tells the story of what happened when L'Oreal partner Jean Frydman, a former French Resistance hero who had fought against anti-Semitism all his life, stumbled upon and exposed the shocking truth about L'Oreal and its web of concealed Nazi collaborators. Making it his crusade to unmask the cosmetics firm's long history of Nazi connections, Frydman filed suit against L'Oreal for forgery, perjury, and racial discrimination.

"An ... account ... by a member of the Israeli parliament."

Tells the story of Paul Fackenheim, a Jewish prisoner at Dachau, who was released on condition that he spy for Nazi Germany in Palestine.