Catching Up with my Reading

When it comes to literary non-fiction, I seek out authors such as Thomas Cahill who not only do their research but seek ways to synthesize what they find and create a narrative that's as good as any novel's story line.

Such is the case with The Gifts of the Jews.

This is the third Cahill book I've read, the first being the compelling How the Irish Saved Civilization.

This book is good. Cahill is a smooth writer, one with an understanding that the story is more important than the clever sentence. This book gave the inside of my head a good scratching as he took an in-depth look at the development of the Jewish faith and its unique perspective on life as it unfolds in the Old Testament.

While I'm not certain I agree with all of his conclusions (he dismisses all of the work by Marija Gimbutas out of hand in a single sentence, for example), I appreciate the way he took a taken-for-granted aspect of our lives and saw it anew.

Good stuff.