Books in Brief

Deserves an “F”

Stranger in the Valley of the Kings: The Identification of Yuya as the Patriarch Joseph

Ahmed Osman (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 176 pp., $17.95

This ingenious work is one of those books whose author inexplicably fails to do his homework in one part, and lets his critical judgment lapse in the other. Sadly, Mr. Osman has no new evidence to offer, nor any new reconstruction of history other than that which, at one time or another, has suggested itself to many an undergraduate, only to be dismissed upon sober reflection. I find myself wondering, then, why Mr. Osman felt obliged to write the book at all. But he did write it, and my remarks are directed toward those who might be misled into taking it seriously.