“Wars in history,” the historian Michael Oren observed, “invariably become wars of history.” Oren was writing about the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated the combined armies of its Arab opponents in less than a week. But for many Israelis, it is the Yom Kippur War whose memory is the most prevalent and contentious in the contemporary affairs of their country. As Uri Kaufman highlights in his new book, Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How it Created the Modern Middle East, this is for good reason.
Kaufman, an attorney turned real estate developer, has spent decades studying the Yom Kippur War. His mastery of the subject is obvious and his writing style is engaging. This is not a boring tome of military history that leaves the reader lost in the weeds and burdened with unnecessary details and facts.
Importantly, this is the first English-language look at the Yom Kippur War in two decades.
(Read the rest of CAMERA’s Oct. 13, 2023 review of Kaufman’s book at Providence Magazine)