OT as history?

Having been watching the ABC Compass documentary "It ain't necessarily so" on Sunday nights for the last three weeks, I have found that I have developed a sudden interest in the Old Testament and how it relates to contemporary (secular) history. I guess I have always considered the old testament to be an authoritative source for history in the region, but watching the documentary doing its level best to turn up discrepancies between biblical evidence and archaeological evidence showed me how much we don't know or can't correlate with other sources.

Whilst it's relatively easy to accept that for things like the creation story or some of the more "poetic" of the OT works, I was astonished that so little evidence seems to exist even to show the exodus from Egypt.

I have resolved that I want to know more.