One thing I try to do before I go on a
big trip or pilgrimage is learn something about my destination. Of course, for
the two trips to the UK that was easy – in a sense my entire professional life
as a historian, including my training at LSU, was prep for that! Sort of the
same thing was true for Italy, since I teach World Civ as well as Ancient
History and a course specific to Ancient
Rome. In the case of Mexico I had much less background, so I did read
several books specifically on the object of that pilgrimage, the apparitions of
Our Lady of Guadalupe – but once I was there I wished I had read more broadly,
especially on more recent Mexican history.
In the case of the Holy Land, both my
religious background and my historical training give me a pretty firm grounding
in the Biblical History (I even teach a course on that, specifically), but
frankly I know little to nothing about the later history except insofar as it
was peripherally significant to Roman and European history – that only up
through the Crusades. Even though I have lived through most of the history of
the modern state of Israel, moreover, I have had only a reasonably aware
layman’s knowledge of that history as well. Yes, I read James Michener’s The Source thirty-odd years ago, but I
remember almost nothing from it specifically.
So I decided to rectify that lacuna in
my knowledge. My reading and movie-watching hasn’t really been systematic, but
here’s what I have read and watched so far – and I may supplement this with
dated updates over the next few weeks:
