The Sword Of Goliath Book

This is definitely popular history. Not as bad a genre as true crime, maybe, or god forbid, narrative romantic non-fiction, but...

Okay.

This is my problem with popular history: There's a lot of this book that's pure speculation, fueled by the author's apparent self satisfaction at creating a portrait of King David as a sort of ruthless-yet-pathetic prototype for contemporary middle-eastern strongmen. If most of its conclusions are undeniably compelling - and they are - those that aren't sometimes go as far as to be at odds with the author's own methodology, forcing him to throw out historically credible chunks of biblical text and evidence in order to conform it to the narrative he's crafting.

That said the book is actually pretty darn good. Or at least compulsively readable, which has to count for something. McKenzie can write. He can convey an idea clearly and concisely. In fact, he's done an admirable job at trying to cut through a lot of mythmaking and historical embellishment in an attempt to suss out the "realistically plausible" David. He's even mostly succeeded.

The book's also short, thank god. I love short books. I'm a busy man.

I plowed through this one in a few hours, instead of sleeping, and, as opposed to a lot of the books I've read recently, I don't want that time back.