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Jerusalem
FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED FOR 2024
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Spectacular. [Montefiore] really tells you what the life of the city has been like and why it means so much. You fall in love with the city. It’s a treasure. It’s a wonderful book." —Bill Clinton
"Impossible to put down. . . . Vastly enjoyable." —The New York Times Book Review
The history of Jerusalem is the story of the world: Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths. The Holy City and Holy Land are the battlefields for today’s multifaceted conflicts and, for believers, the setting for Judgment Day and the Apocalypse. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the “center of the world” and now the key to peace in the Middle East? Why is the Holy Land so important not just to the region and its many new players, but to the wider world too? Drawing on new archives and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city and turbulent region through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the kings, empresses, amirs, sultans, caliphs, presidents, autocrats, imperialists and warlords, poets, prophets, saints and rabbis who created, destroyed, chronicled, and believed in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
A classic of modern literature, this is not only the epic story of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism, co-existence, power and myth, but also a freshly updated, carefully balanced history of the Middle East, from King David to the new powers of the twenty-first century, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is how today’s Middle East was forged, how the Holy Land became sacred and how Jerusalem became Jerusalem—the only city that exists twice—in heaven and on earth.
“Magnificent. . . . Montefiore barely misses a trick or a character intaking us through the city’s story with compelling, breathless tension.” —The Wall Street Journal
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Reviews
I am an avid reader of history and civilization and read this book to further my understanding. Each book seems to build on, and reinforce, the previous, making the sum of the parts greater than the whole. And this book did not disappoint. We Americans pride ourselves on having left the ‘Old World’, with its religious wars and territorial squabbles, behind, but this book showed how we are just part of a shared continuum that was not broken by Christopher Columbus’ discovery in 1492. But that is not to say that this book is doom and gloom. It tells the story of the Human Condition, with all its triumphs and tragedies. The song ‘One’, by U2 comes to mind.
By wrong charting data
This is not a professional historian. No objectivity in presenting information based on facts. Lazy research and analysis. When he hits a gap, just fills it with his opinion. Also, way too dismissive and bias against any religious sources.
By qlo777
A must have and read book for everybody who loves Jerusalem.
By jerusalmit