Sunday reading

The latest edition of the New York Review of Books has three excellent pieces:

Mark Danner on Iraq: The war of imagination, reviewing books by Bob Woodward, Ron Suskind and James Risen. It builds on his analysis of the Downing St memos last year and he promises more to come.

(John Naughton's blogged the same piece here)

Then Neal Ascherson reviews David Remnick's book, Reporting (previously blogged). Ascherson finds a theme:

Most of the profiles in this anthology, though not all, are about leaders—in the United States, Britain, Israel, Palestine, and elsewhere—who fight only to survive. They are skilled and impressive, satisfied that they have "done their best," but they do not risk plunging into those dark places where disasters but also breakthroughs are found. As a result, nothing essential changes and impacted problems remain to poison future generations.

And finally, Jonathan Freedland reviews a clutch of biographies of Ariel Sharon and reconstructs his career and impact on the Middle East. Not least, tracking Sharon's journey towards compromise. As he told the Likud Central Committee a few months before his stroke:

"We cannot maintain a Jewish democratic state while holding on to all the land of Israel. If we demand the whole dream we may end up with nothing at all. That is where the extreme path leads."

A remarkable statement, as Freedland puts it, for it was Ariel Sharon who had led Israel down that path for nearly four decades.