Bible Companion

I had to be patient wading through all the initial descriptions of the backdrop of daily life before finally coming to the actual Bible coverage. Through the first half, this didn't seem to be a book focusing on the Bible at all -- just the mundane daily-life background of the Bible, raising the question of what is meant by "Bible Companion".I was expecting more coverage of the OT stories and a little more coverage of the NT stories, and less coverage of the backdrop of daily life. Given the limited space, I'm surprised this book isn't primarily organized in terms of the OT and NT stories, only secondarily interweaving a little of daily life within that primary framework.The text is tiny, but that turned out to not be a problem for me.This book has some maps but really needs a couple genealogy diagrams covering the figures who are listed in the Who's Who section. The book depends heavily on the un-illustrated Who's Who section in the back, losing the publisher's strength which is in integrated graphic/text communication. The Who's Who text-only appendix, with sentences defining the relationships among the characters, is hard to grasp and retain. A diagrammatic presentation of personal relationships would enable such a short book to communicate the stories more effectively, in a graspable way.It's a fine book, but I hope the publisher makes these changes. I commend DK Publishing for taking on the fun challenge of communicating so much in such a small space -- and I encourage them to continue refining their approach. To get the full potential out of the book, I'll need to read it a second time, working from the text-only appendixes to the graphical matter in the main part of the book.