Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilisations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem's biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women - kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores - who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill; from Abraham to Jesus and Muhammad; from the ancient world of Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and Nero to the modern times of the Kaiser, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Rasputin and Lawrence of Arabia. Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime's study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique story of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem: the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth.

ISBN 0297852655   Pages 672 ISBN13 9780297852650 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 1080 Publisher Orion Publishing Co   Published in London Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson   Height (mm) 240 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 159 Publication date 27 Jan 2011   Spine width (mm) 48 DEWEY 956.9442   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

A fittingly vast and dazzling portrait of Jerusalem, utterly compelling from start to finish. -- Christopher Hart THE SUNDAY TIMES Astoundingly ambitious and triumphantly epic history...His achievement, in fashioning a fluent narrative out of such daunting material can hardly be praised enough. There are few themes as demanding as the history of Jerusalem...tautly gripping...a book with its gaze fixed on the stars [but] also with its feet firmly in the gutter... A heavenly city Jerusalem may be; but it is also a relentlessly terrestrial one. The achievement of this marvellous book is to fuse them into one biography. -- Tom Holland THE DAILY TELEGRAPH as one turns the pages of Simon Sebag Montefiore's absorbing book...[one] becomes gripped by the rich, pungent detail of the lives of Jerusalem's rulers and the ruled. Montefiore has a great novelist's eye for detail, a great journalist's nose for human frailty, and a great historian's touch... judicious, nuanced, balanced and sensitive... when a history is written this way one can never have too much. -- Michael Gove THE TIMES Outstanding, superbly objective, elegantly written and highly entertaining -- Saul David MAIL ON SUNDAY Simon Sebag Montefiore's history of Jerusalem is a labour of love and scholarship... a considerable achievement... he has a wonderful ear for the absurdities and adventurers of the past... totally gripping... vivid compelling, engaged, engrossing, knowledgeable -- Barnaby Rogerson THE INDEPENDENT Compelling and thought-provoking...Working on an immense chronological and thematic canvas Sebag Montefiore does his subject more than justice. He narrates the terrible history of Jerusalem vividly and graphically... fascinating but ghastly. -- Munro Price THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH Montefiore's book, packed with fascinating and often grisly detail, is a gripping account of war, betrayal, rape, massacre, sadistic torture, fanaticism, feuds, persecution, corruption, hypocrisy and spirituality...Montefiore's narrative is remarkably objective...A reliable and compelling account -- Antony Beevor THE GUARDIAN masterly, vastly entertaining and timely... Sebag Montefiore has an unerring eye for the vivid detail to illustrate his point and the telling quote to place it in context... a compelling narrative and an important book. -- Victor Sebestyen EVENING STANDARD Jerusalem is an extraordinary achievement, written with imagination and energy that threatens to mesmerize and exhaust the reader at the same time...the resulting impression is of a unique borderline personality, with an irrepressible capacity for love and hatred; an aptitude for poetry, prophecy and the sacred; with no lack of the grotesquely profane...Read this book. -- Financial Times John Cornwell To write a "biography" of Jerusalem is a formidable undertaking. Simon Sebag Montefiore has risen to the challenge. His book can be commended to anyone who is planning a trip to Jerusalem, or who wants background on the Palestinian question - or who just enjoys a good read. PROSPECT Jerusalem is as a big as its gets... brilliantly accomplished -- Dan Jones INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY This is [a] compendious and fleet-footed history of a city -- Jonathan Beckman THE OBSERVER A riveting account of the eternal battle to prove whose God is best. WORD magazine an enormous and enthralling epic, the prose equivalent of those sprawling Hollywood films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur or The Fall Of The Roman Empire. Here are dashing warrior kings, feuding prophets and priests, beautiful and dangerous women, spectacular battles and a potent mix of piety and profanity. All human life was there. All human life is here...this magnificent history gives the general reader a vivid insight into a conflict that seems without resolution. -- Peter Burton DAILY EXPRESS a tour de force -- Philip Mansel SPECTATOR Montefiore has constructed a narrative that has a pleasing flow and more than does justice to his subject...his history is remarkab

Blackwell review:
The history of Jerusalem, in the words of Simon Sebag Montefiore is ‘the history of the world’. Therefore any attempt to write a biography of this ancient city must be one fuelled by great courage, skill and determination.

Simon Sebag Montefiore displays all three attributes in a passionate and knowledgeable narrative. The makings of a magnificent book are in place, and some important questions are asked. Why and how did a small village of no strategic value, become a city of such importance? Short of water, baked by a hot summer sun and tormented by winter winds, far from trade routes and even farther from the image envisaged for the birthplace of such a complex city.

Yet from this village the Holy City sprang, its history confused, troubled and at times ghastly and depraved. Sebag Montefiore charts this religious and political hotbed of a city through the lives of the many men, women, soldiers, prophets, peasants, nobility and royalty that have called Jerusalem home.

The story is told chronologically, with the main body of the book ending with a brief account of the already short Six Day War of 1967. The explanation that Sebag Montefiore provides of the millennia that lie between the city’s unlikely origins to the Six Day War is frankly remarkable when considering the diversity of its inhabitants; Persians to Romans, Crusaders to Ottomans, Babylonians to British, to name but a few.

However, the condensing of a 3000 year narrative to around 600 pages is skilful on the one part, but alarming on the other. For all of the passion, knowledge, and skill demonstrated in writing what is essentially a well-written book, there remains a feeling that something is not quite right.

Jerusalem: The Biography feels as if it appeals to almost a too broad an audience. A ‘Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none’ scenario is too harsh a description, but in places the narrative does wander dangerously close to the cliff-edge of superficiality.

The problem lies not with Sebag Montefiore’s approach, which is commendable given the subject matter, but in his declaration that to write of the modern history of Jerusalem is a near –impossibility. He is most probably correct, yet by admitting defeat when faced with the daunting task of making the impossible possible Sebag Montefiore has somewhat undone himself.

Jerusalem: The Biography is undoubtedly a good book, well written and extensively researched. Yet as Sebag Montefiore writes ‘the history of Jerusalem is the history of the world’, and on reaching the final chapter the realisation hits. This book does not do enough to earn its self-proclaimed title, it is not the biography that it wants to be.

In accordance to the rules of an old adage, Jerusalem: The Biography cannot be judged on its cover, but it can for the title imprinted upon it.

Reviewed by Paul Scott, Cornwall



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