On “The Holy Land” by George W. Knight ***

I've had this pictorial guide on my shelf for probably close to a decade now, a gift from someone at church. It's made to be picked up, read a bit, and put down. But I finally decided to do more than that, to actually read it from start to finish. When I say that it's made to be picked up and put down, what I mean is that it's structured around various sites, prolific with photographs, and somewhat interesting in the short term. But that was precisely the reason I never read it in full. There is not a through-line, so anything but short reading into the book doesn't tend to hold one's focus. The book is, in essence, set up like an Insight Guide, one of those marvelously illustrated travel guides to a region, full of info and pictures, but really intended for you to read about sites of interest rather than to read it from start to finish. There wasn't much to be gained from the book in terms of new information; it was interesting, I suppose, on the level of thinking about events spatially and regionally: this is the area where X and Y and Z happened. Sometimes, it was enlightening that way, making one realize that certain events shared a place. For what it is, however, within its genre, it's a great book, wonderful to look at and drop into occasionally—which is why I've kept it on the shelf.