The Yom Kippur War, Revised (2017) [+]
Sep 15 2025
The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed The Middle East, Revised Edition (2017) by Abraham Rabinovich is an account of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. With lots of Israeli sources there is a lot of detail on that side going down to notable and heroic actions by individual soldiers, though mostly keeps to higher level commanders. There is some of that on the Egyptian side, some from personal diaries. The Syrian side has little personal stories so I guess few sources there.
It's a 560 page trade paperback so there is a lot of details. A few maps to help you visualize things though this is not a battle study so don't need detailed maps showing unit movements during a battle. This was a recommended book a wargame designer and the combats are fairly detailed.
I have another book on the war, The Yom Kippur War and the Airlift That Saved Israel (2002) by Walter J Boyne. Almost 300 pages but much less dense text so I think Rabinovich's book has double the word count. Boyne's book is necessarily less detailed though it does go some into the US side of the airlift to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition which Rabinovich mentions but briefly. For the US side Rabinovich has some stuff with Kissinger and his shuttle diplomacy and apparently President Nixon was more concerned with the Watergate hearings.
Rabinovich's book was originally written in 2004. Later, Israel released a bunch of secret documents about the war and Rabinovich incorporates some of that which he highlights in a new introduction. The biggest thing is that there was a highly placed mole in the Egyptian government that gave Israel enough warning to have been ready but another part of Israeli intelligence was too reliant on tapped phone lines (which hadn't been activated) and the intuition of the head of that agency.
Anyway, this is a really good book. I like the detail and the narration of the action on various fronts. I either forgot a lot of what Boyne or Rabinovich's book has a lot more information since I don't recall knowing it before.
It's a 560 page trade paperback so there is a lot of details. A few maps to help you visualize things though this is not a battle study so don't need detailed maps showing unit movements during a battle. This was a recommended book a wargame designer and the combats are fairly detailed.
I have another book on the war, The Yom Kippur War and the Airlift That Saved Israel (2002) by Walter J Boyne. Almost 300 pages but much less dense text so I think Rabinovich's book has double the word count. Boyne's book is necessarily less detailed though it does go some into the US side of the airlift to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition which Rabinovich mentions but briefly. For the US side Rabinovich has some stuff with Kissinger and his shuttle diplomacy and apparently President Nixon was more concerned with the Watergate hearings.
Rabinovich's book was originally written in 2004. Later, Israel released a bunch of secret documents about the war and Rabinovich incorporates some of that which he highlights in a new introduction. The biggest thing is that there was a highly placed mole in the Egyptian government that gave Israel enough warning to have been ready but another part of Israeli intelligence was too reliant on tapped phone lines (which hadn't been activated) and the intuition of the head of that agency.
Anyway, this is a really good book. I like the detail and the narration of the action on various fronts. I either forgot a lot of what Boyne or Rabinovich's book has a lot more information since I don't recall knowing it before.