In Jonah's World: Social Science and the Reading of Prophetic Story, the biblical book of Jonah is considered through the use of social-science approaches and models: the construct of an imaginary world using the human constructs by which meaning is created of the world in which the scribal author lived, taking into consideration the world of empire, hierarchy, and symbolic understanding of place, flora and fauna. The book perceives Jonah as an exercise in dealing with reality through literary fiction.