The Gold of Exodus

Rating:
Summary: Necessary Reading
Review: A lesson on lifestyle, politics, and the love of God. No one from a cloistered monk to the leader of the free world should skip reading this. PS I first read an excerpt of it in Vanity Fair before reading the book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't listen to the other reviews
Review: This is without a doubt one of my favorite books ever. I really don't get why others rated the book so low. I couldn't put it down, and hope to see the movie one day.

Rating:
Summary: Did they or didn't they?
Review: I thought it was a fun book to read, and very intriguing. Yet it forces one to make a judgement as to whether or not it really happened they way they wrote it or it is just a good story. But assuming it all really happened, I do not know what is more disturbing, that Mt. Sinai is real and in Saudi, or that it is that easy to break into Saudi strategic military installations...

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This is a book I would not have bought if I had had the chance to leaf through it. Besides the fact that it details impossiblities and offers up slander and gossip as fact, it is incredibly boring and poorly written. I had to force myself to continue reading and continue and continue. The writer belongs to the "Charles Dickens" school of writing.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, Provocative
Review: Whether true or not it makes you think. I enjoyed it

Rating:
Summary: Oh, Please!
Review: While reading this book, I was reminded of a couple of boys telling how they sneaked over a fence to partake of forbidden fruit. "Boys" is the operative term. What a bunch of amateurs!

Rating:
Summary: Creative fantasy, yet most improbable.
Review: Ironically, I read this fictional work while serving as an Army intelligence officer here in Saudi Arabia. I must say that the author was exceptionally creative, but not at all realistic in his portrayal of anyone's ability to enter and operate within the borders of KSA. As an intelligence specialist here, I was very amused by the tale described, but hope that readers actually believe what they have read.

Rating:
Summary: Bad Tom Clancy
Review: Apparently Mr. Blum didn't have a chance to read the manuscript upon which someone put his name. There is no such thing as a 'approximately 96.4 degree inclination,' and if there were, you couldn't get to it from Florida. The TitanIII launch vehicle would fall on Memphis, Chicago or Minneapolis. An eight inch resolution at ninety miles has little to do with the resolution of an orbiting sensor. Even at eight inches, how could the CIA whiz-kid distinguish beards or faces at an eight inch resolution, especially from directly above? If this purportedly true story could be so bizarrely wrong about easily checked facts, how can anyone believe those facts which, conveniently, cannot be verified? Put it with the Late Great Planet Earth and all the Noah's Ark Found books and move on to some good fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but I didn't hold my breath
Review: I though this book had a slow start (up until they visited the professor) and some of the political and military revelations were confusing. Parts of the book were very interesting and I believe the real Mt. Sinai was found.

Rating:
Summary: An Ed Wood adventure worse than Hitler's Diary
Review: This book (and the tape) reflect a definite lack of theological, political and geological reality. The assumptions stated about Biblical facts (?) and their adventure in Saudi are questionable on the surface and ludicrous upon closer examination. My NIV and KJ Bibles don't read the same way! Their lack of basic geological knowledge is astounding. I find it amazing that everything was just lying on the surface after thousands of years. Archaeology (and weathering) just don't work that way. Go to Israel or anywhere in the mid-east and witness what thousands of years of weathering does to man-made structures and the landscape. I've been to Mt. Sinai in Egypt and have no particular feeling that it is the "real one." However, I could make many of the author's assumptions about it also. It's easy to manufacture "facts" to support a position and to sell books. The book was an OK read if you believe in conspiracy theories (and little green men) and accept everything (or anything) written down without question. This is Mystery Science Theater material and would have made Ed Wood proud.