Love this book. Fair and balanced, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the jewish state.

The book is action packed and the atmosphere in the subways is wonderfully presented. However, I found the plot development rather slow and the characters other than the protagonist were a bit shallow.

I can see why people love this book. However for me it was too slow and too lyrical almost poetic.

A very detailed insight on the appeasement politics of the pre-WW2 governments. I would say it is too detailed too provide a leisurely read. Not an easy read at all.

Flashback style really confused me. Chronology sometimes difficult to follow.

Furthermore. Every first page of a new chapter deliberately confuses you by providing no context and jumping to a new story only to provide context the later on. I consider this a pretty cheap stylistic trick and made me dread every beginning of the chapter.

This book is pretty hard work.

Excellent fair and balanced history of South Africa, challenging " white" and " black" myths. Well written: thoroughly enjoyed it.

Great concept. However, story is forgettable and at 3/4 of the book I lost interest.

Ik herken me in de eerdere recensie. Boek gekocht vanwege de ironische stijl en de frisse blik die ik meende te herkennen. Die stijl en frisheid weet de schrijver niet vast te houden. Daardoor 13 in een dozijn verontwaardigd boekje.

Decent book. Had expected more after "Blink" though.

A very extensive, complete and neutral account of the story of 1967 war. The amount of attention paid to the context in which this war could come about is it's strong point and weakness at the same time. I almost quit reading cause I wanted to read about the going of the war instead of the context. But when I was finished I realised that this context and prelude was necessary to really understand the war and indeed how political it was. I am quite familiar with the middle east, but this book gave me an extra insight into the ridiculous complexity of this war tormented area.

A trilling story about war and the good fight but also a touching story about brotherhood, loss and grief.
Elaborates on both the exciting part of war but also about the very, very awful parts of it.

A great, great(!) book. But also hard work to read.

Having read Plato's republic, this book helped me understand it even more.

Masterly refutation of socialism and planeconomy. In the present era his arguments(written down in 1943) sometimes seem outdated or at least very unoriginal. But I guess this just underlines that he is the intellectual godfather of todays liberals and perhaps to a lesser extent libertarians.

Great book, very dense, very torough. Being unfamiliar with the british parliamentary system however it was sometimes hard to grasp the extensive parts on it.

And I have to agree with those that find that his style makes it somewhat hard to read(long sentences, obscure lexicon).

Having said that, this is a masterly biography.

Excellent book, Very rich in detail. This makes the battles sometimes incomprehensible, but this could be because english is not my mothertongue or because the exact manouevres are not of particular interest to me.

I am dutch, and therefore have a natural sympathy for the boers. I found Pakenham unbiased although he does focus primarily on the english side of the war which is too bad. This is probably because the availabe sources are primarily of english origins.

Nevertheless, good book, could recommend it to anyoen interested in (british)military history or the boers.