Non­fic­tion

Holy Wars: 3000 Years of Bat­tles in the Holy Land

Gary Rash­ba
  • Review
By – May 25, 2012
The meet­ing place of three con­ti­nents, riv­en by the Syro-African Depres­sion, both ter­rain and loca­tion have deter­mined that the land of Israel should be the site of many of history’s fiercest bat­tles. Defense ana­lyst Gary Rash­ba gives us sev­en­teen chap­ters of them, each one a brief stop in three mil­len­nia of war­fare in the Holy Land.

Rash­ba usu­al­ly focus­es the scene on a par­tic­u­lar­ly intense bat­tle. The episod­ic treat­ment works, giv­ing the author the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell the his­to­ry of an entire war with­out step­ping too far away from the action. His use of the lan­guage of mil­i­tary strat­e­gy strength­ens his effort to bring verisimil­i­tude to what, in many chap­ters, such as the strug­gle of David with Goliath, are events so shroud­ed by time that the facts have to be invent­ed or embell­ished.

One of the advan­tages of Rashba’s broad scope is to watch the tech­nol­o­gy and tac­tics of war change. From sling­shot to Russ­ian MiG, from long, slow sieges to ultra rapid attacks, from Sal­adin to Allen­by, one thing is clear — the Holy Land is no stranger to war.
Jeff Bogursky reads a lot, writes a lit­tle and talks quite a bit. He is a media exec­u­tive and expert in dig­i­tal media.

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