The Two O'Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and the Airlift That Saved Israel

In The Two O'Clock War Walter J. Boyne chronicles with intense detail the brief but furious October 1973 invasion of Israel by Egypt and Syria, an episode also known as the Yom Kippur War. Boyne alternates his attention between actual battlefield descriptions and the equally frantic maneuvering by diplomats and statesmen of the combatant countries, their allies. and, most ominously, Russia and the United States, which refused to stop rattling their sabers at each other. At least twice, the region--and by implication the greater world--came perilously close to suffering the ultimate nightmare: nuclear war. Boyne's language is often blunt but he is generally fair-minded: his showers of blame and praise fall on individuals on both sides of the conflict. Running through the book is his premise, convincingly presented, that a massive American airlift--Operation Nickel Grass--was the decisive factor in Israel's fending off defeat. The book--especially its military sections--demands a reader's full attention. --H. O'Billovich