The current news of a 1,500 year old church uncovered in an archaeological dig in Israel was like déjà vu for me after reading The Source early this New Year's.





This picture above, and its story could be straight out of a movie version of The Source. I think the book's dig was based on Tel Megiddo, but Michener observed archaeologists at work at Hazor to prepare for writing this book.

As you can tell from reading the other reviews here, the conflicts between peoples and the layering of religious histories in the middle-east are traced here in to their earliest roots in James A. Michener's signature historical fiction style.

In Melissa's Review she writes that Michener traces the history of a single town in Israel/Palestine through the ages - from man's earliest attempts to tame nature and understand the supernatural, through the evolutions of the world's greatest religions, to the contemporary struggles that mark the land.

I was surprised and encouraged to see so many reviewers remarking upon how many times they'd re-read this book and how many archaeologists here on GR are reviewing and rating this book, many even awarding the book some claim on creating the ambition and interest that led them to pursue the field of archeology in the first place.

It is a compelling read that illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of archeology and its reliance on a knowledge of history, language, science, engineering and architecture. Wonderful stuff and even more wonderful to have all of it bound between the covers of one book!

My paperback copy felt like it might be as old as the church uncovered by this dig and Michener's fictional equivalent it literally fell into about four sections somewhere in Phoenix during my New Year's journey's stopover on the way home so I haven't finished it yet! Half of it went into the circular file at PHX. This is truly a story of biblical proportions so losing half of it can still mean you were already a few hundred pages into the story! I'll be getting a hardbound or kindle edition to use for reading the second half!