(7/15/2001)
Chris
I read "A God in Ruins" directly after reading "Exodus" and was stricken by two things:
First, "Exodus" was near sublime, the research was astounding and the characters were wonderful.
"A God in Ruins", however, did not appear to live up to any of the standards set forth in "Exodus".
Second, in "Exodus" it was obvious that Uris recognized the Jewish need to have weapons to defend themselves against both the British and the Arabs. It would appear that he has a lot of faith in the benevolence of the American government... that the people will never have a need to defend themselves against an oppressive governments, regardless of what we saw with the American Indians, and many popular sentiments against different ethnic, religious, moral groups.
I, for one, would like to see how Uris reconciles his two points of view.