All who are familiar with his work will listen with interest to this audio record of his most significant speeches from 1948 to 1968. The story is told in language of rare dignity and grace, and with a full sense of pageantry. It offers an unequaled picture of the young country in the first two decades of its modern national life, with insights on the Middle East situation that still resonate today.

This unique chronicle recalls the unforgettable first days of Israel's independence, when Arab armies sought to crush it by force. The Arabs rejected the UN plan for the partition of Palestine and refused to accept Israel's very existence. At the United Nations, Mr. Eban defiantly answered that refusal. "Whether they want peace or war," he declared, "they can have it only with the State of Israel."

With passion and brilliance, Abba Eban stated his nation's case in the tribunals of world opinion.

Mr. Eban first achieved international attention in 1948 and 1949 with powerful speeches presenting the case for Jewish statehood at the United Nations. With the admission of Israel to the United Nations in 1949, he was appointed its Permanent Representative to the UN. In 1950 he presented his credentials as Ambassador to the United States, then—at 35 years of age—the youngest to hold such a post. For a decade he served concurrently in both positions with great distinction.

In 1966, Mr. Eban became the Foreign Minister of Israel, and he served his country over three decades as a member of the Knesset.

Both a diplomat and a scholar, Abba Eban wrote several books and narrated television documentaries about the Jewish people and Israel. In 2001, he won the Israel Prize, his country's highest honor.

The cultivated oratory, the logic, the force and wit of Abba Eban are widely recognized and well remembered.

"Those who build a bridge between different cultures," Mr. Eban once declared, "who deduce from history the material of social harmony—who find the common and the different factor in disparate civilizations—these by their scholarship and zeal can illuminate the paths of peace." This statement might well be applied to Mr. Eban himself.