HERZL by AMOSELON
448 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
$15.
His contemporaries labeled him "a political Jules Verne." The term was pejorative; Verne, after all, was producing outlandish fictions about lunar voyages and undersea exploration. Theodor Herzl was even more absurd. He helped create Zionism and predicted the return of the Jews to their homeland. Yet the comparison with Verne was more than superficial. Both men began as romantic visionaries who sought careers in law, then in the theater, then in literature. Verne went on to science fiction; Herzl went on to Palestine. That...