biography

Reading Gilad Sharon’s new biography of his famous father, Ariel Sharon, one comes to understand why Gilad and his brother Omri insisted on keeping the former Israeli prime minister alive, against the advice of doctors, when he suffered a debilitating stroke almost six years ago.

Much as others have questioned that judgment, as Sharon remains in a coma-like state, it was consistent with the way their father lived, and led, on the battlefield and in the seat of power in Jerusalem. And the basis for the sons’ decision goes back more than six decades.

It should be no surprise that author Sarah Bakewell found in the 16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne a voice that is entirely of the present.