Really great. ( )

Leonard Cohen is a musician who lived a hard life of drugs and was quite depressed. He left his career and went to the war in Israel where he did play and sing again. In this book the author informs us of the war and writes a brief biography of Cohen and his time in the Sinai. I felt it was not very engaging, maybe a bit disorganized. It ended okay.

Skillfully weaving together the story of Leonard Cohen’s visit to the Israeli soldiers fighting in the Sinai during the Yom Kippur War, with actual stories of those who fought in that war, Who By Fire is a fascinating look at a forgotten part of musical history. Cohen’s visit wasn’t recorded on either film or audio tape, and there was scant mention of his visit in the Israeli press. The author interviewed soldiers who were there, and was fortunate enough to obtain access to the brief and unpublished journal that Cohen wrote when he traveled from his home in Greece to Israel. Parts of his journal reveal some rather unpleasant aspects of Cohen’s personality, and these aren’t glossed over by the author. Friedman also looks into the origin of some of Cohen’s songs influenced by his experience in the Sinai.

Excellent narration by the author and the actor reading Cohen’s journal.

My thanks to OrangeSky audio and Netgalley for providing an ALC of this rather interesting book. ( )

interesting. Leonard Cohen has given up on music, lives with non jewish partner and has a child, involved in buddhist rituals, but when the "73 Yom Kippur War starts he "needs" to get to Israel. once there he is recognized and given a guitar and goes down to the sinai to sing to the troops. He eats with them and sleeps in sleeping bags and lives with the troops. He writes a song which at first is about the Israeli soldiers but later he changes some lyrics and says it is for the Egyptian/ & Israeli soldiers. Some quotes from his notebook and some interesting photos ( )

Who By Fire by Matti Friedman is more than simply a book about Leonard Cohen, it is a book about life, death, and change told through a less known but very impactful period in Cohen's life.

While his tour during the Yom Kippur War isn't widely known it is not quite unknown, especially in Israel. Yet even for longtime fans of his (my interest in his words and music dates back to the late 60s) little detail and almost none of the impact of that tour on Cohen is known. Until now.

Even though this book is certainly about Cohen it is just as much about those who saw him on that tour and about how it affected their lives. Cohen mentions that he was the one helped and changed by his tour just as much as he helped those who saw him. The material Friedman gets access to shows a side of Cohen that is not quite what we have come to know, yet also very much the man we came to know. That doesn't seem to make sense, and some may disagree, but in reading what he wrote during and shortly after that time one sees more of an amplified version of what he is remembered as rather than a different version.

I'm not sure I can express what I want to say very well, so I will just leave the previous paragraph as is and suggest that, if you are a fan of Cohen or just admire his work, you should read this book and discover for yourself how his experience altered the course of his life. I think you may be surprised at just how much reading this may affect you.

This version of the Yom Kippur War is told from Israel's perspective but the overall message(s) go beyond any particular war or conflict. So don't let any political or religious biases, in any direction, keep you from reading this. The take aways for me have to do with my relationship with humanity and not with a particular nation-state or religious belief system.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )