The first female head of state in the Western world and one of the most influential women in modern history, Golda Meir was one of the founders of the State of Israel, the architect of its socialist infrastructure, and its most tenacious international defender. Historian-journalist Burkett looks beyond Meir's well-known accomplishments to the complex motivations and ideals, personal victories and disappointments, of her charismatic public persona. Beginning with Meir's childhood in virulently anti-Semitic Russia and her family's subsequent relocation to the United States, Burkett places Meir within the framework of the American immigrant experience, the Holocaust, and the singlemindedness of a generation that carved a nation out of its own nightmares and dreams.--From publisher description.