Hillel Halkin is a respected Israeli translator, novelist, and critic, which promised a great biography. It is a nice one, but, as probably conditioned by the contract of Yale’s Jewish Lives series, it is painfully short, giving no room for Halkin’s own voice.

Personally, I would prefer the same number of pages filled with Halkin’s meditations over Jabo, instead of him trying to squeeze Jabotinsky’s life timeline between the tight covers.

Halkin, being a literary person and obviously chosen because of this to author this biography, just like Jabo himself, balances between Jabo’s literature and Jabo’s Zionism, and one can clearly see which one he enjoys describing more—which is, of course, understandable.

Overall, it’s definitely not a bad read and is useful for beginners. The best parts of it, as expected, are Halkin's explorations of Jabo's ideology, which Jabo clearly deserves after decades of being branded a fascist—first by mainstream Zionism and the Israeli left, then by anti-Israeli scholars and activists.