Review: Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire

Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire by Eckart Frahm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An informative and approachable overview of the history of Assyria. The author takes you through the origins of Assyrian empire, its wars and conquests, and its people. There is information about the religion and statecraft, it's relationships with its neighbors. After discussing the downfall and disappearance of the empire as empire, the last part of the book discusses the legacy of Assyria up through present day. The intersection of the Assyrian history and biblical history is intriguing. The discussion of ISIS and its despicable destruction of ancient sites was disturbing.

This is a good book to look into if you are interested in getting the big picture. There are details, for sure, but that's not really the point here (and I have no way to evaluate the accuracy of those details -- the only minor error I was able to notice was the occasional anachronistic usage of names of geographic areas; that is, using a place name from a much later time to refer to the place in the past without the qualification of, for example, 'now know as' or some such thing). The point is more to get a sense of the uniqueness of the Assyrian empire and how it influenced later empires in the region. In that regard, the book is quite successful.

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Review: An Inside Job

An Inside Job by Daniel Silva
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Allon is up to his old tricks with heists, forgeries, and restoration. The book is a good read, a fun summer thriller. However, it doesn't quite have the magic of earlier novels. Sometimes it feels like Silva has forgotten that Allon is Israeli and Jewish. There are like maybe four references to remind of us that; and nothing at all in the plot hinges on anything Israeli or Jewish. In the post October 7 world, I would have expect something from Allon about that. The other factor missing is there is little of Allon's inner thoughts and struggles. He's just a maestro orchestrating things as they unfold.

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Review: Before They Are Hanged

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The second book in the First Law Trilogy picks up right where the first ends. While it has been over a year since I read the first book, it didn't take me long to step back into the world. There is a lot more action as the three central story lines set up in the first book come to fruition. The characters are further developed and more of the world is revealed. It continues to be a fresh, unpredictable, and well-crafted fantasy.

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Review: Judaism's Encounter with American Sports

Judaism's Encounter with American Sports by Jeffrey S. Gurock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting way to look at the history of Jews in America. Gurock tells the story of how Jewish communities approached athletics from the earliest days up through the early 2000s. The first two chapters do also look at Jewish views of sport and athletics from ancient times up through the modern era. The focus is almost entirely on participation in sport, with only a bit here and there about Jewish fandom.

The main theme of the history is unsurprising: the tension between the pull of athletics and the religious laws. From ancient days to the twenty-first century: the main question is does participation in sports conflict with religious duties and if so, what to do about it. The different Jewish movements, orthodoxy, reform, etc., answer these questions differently. These differences, like in may other areas of American Jewry, leads to many intra-Jewish conflicts. The development and differences between the Y, the JCC, and the synagogue as Jewish communal centers was fascinating.

A secondary theme here is how sports participation becomes a marker of acceptance in American society. The negative view of this, from stricter corners of the orthodox world, is that it is a marker of assimilation and loss of Jewishness.

Overall, readable and interesting. Though at times, the minute details of the internecine battles between Yeshivas about how far to go with participation got a bit tedious.

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