Book excerpt: Featuring cuneiform documents newly translated into English, The Raging Torrent: Second Updated and Expanded Edition by Mordechai Cogan, Ph.D, is a comprehensive collection of royal inscriptions and chronographic texts from Assyria and Babylonia. Covering a period of just over three hundred years during the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, The Raging Torrent tells the story of the military encounters between the Mesopotamian empires and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which led in most cases to their submission and ultimate downfall. Many of the texts relate to events described in the Hebrew Bible, while others provide information about affairs that were unknown until their rediscovery in modern times. All the texts have been newly translated from the original cuneiform documents and are accompanied by a consecutive commentary and select bibliography. Illustrative material--maps and photographs of relevant artifacts--provide additional accessibility to the sources of this intriguing period in the history of the ancient Near East.