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92% buy the item featured on this page: Jerusalem: The Biography �12.50 |
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important and beautifully produced book,
This review is from: Jerusalem: The Biography (Hardcover)
Right from the off, with a blistering opening set in 70AD as the Roman general Titus lays siege to Jerusalem, this is a well-paced and absolutely gripping read.
Early on Simon Sebag Montefiore tells us that a story of Jerusalem is, really, `the story of the world'. If at the beginning I was sceptical, by the end I was not. What stops Jerusalem from being a Wikipedian succession of kings, rabbis, muftis and patriarchs is the author's elegant and consistent ability to supply fascinating characters - the kind of characters you might not expect to find in a book like this. For every despot - and there are plenty - Sebag Montefiore gives us a rake, a bungler or an eccentric. Just as Jerusalem emerges as a place of religious intensity, it is also a city addicted to vice. An important and beautifully produced book. Highly recommended.
87 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Capital of Blood and Holiness.,
By
This review is from: Jerusalem: The Biography (Hardcover)
If Jerusalem is a City of World History then it is the capital of blood and holiness. Simon Sebag Montefiore's superb new book is rich with salacious detail, scholarship and narrative drive. Such has been Jerusalem's centrality to history that the author is able to use the city as a prism to shine light upon a number of diverse periods and movements - Roman, Jewish, Christian and Islamic.
The structure of the book is chronological and finely weighted. Jerusalem has witnessed blood upon the hands of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike - yet the author is balanced and insightful enough to praise those rulers and characters of all religions who infused Jerusalem with a sense of tolerance, prosperity and architectural beauty. Jerusalem may be a long book, but it is never laboured. One can read this book cover to cover, or dip into it to mine facts or comment on your favourite chapters, such as the Crusades or the middle east during WWI or WWII. Am pleased to say that Jerusalem: The Biography lives up to the anticipation and hype.
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timely - and Terrific,
This review is from: Jerusalem: The Biography (Hardcover)
Although Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem is an entertaining and engaging romp through history, the present instability in Egypt and the Middle East adds greater resonance to this wonderful book.
Jerusalem: The Biography tells of past uprisings, powerful yet unpopular leaders, bloodshed and religious and political conflict. I purchased this book after reading various favourable reviews - yet such is the scope and richness of this book that no one review (including this one) can do justice to this book, period and region (which is again at the centre of the world's attention).
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent read
Very good book and will need a couple of readings to appreciate everything that is in it. Never known a book contain so many deaths though..a very bloody history.
Published 6 days ago by brianthelion
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jerusalem A Biography
I consider this book quite magnificent and beautifully written and I am unable to put it down. All the information is quite overpowering. Superb
Published 9 days ago by M. Hamilton
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jerusalem - a history
A very interesting book, full of information about Jerusalm. I find it best to read a few pages at a time, and then re-read, because each page is just packed with so much...
Published 10 days ago by Mrs. P. M. Spink
5.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive scholarship combined with pacy writing
The author has amassed a staggering amount of detail in this impressive work of scholarship. It is not a catalogue of dry facts, but is instead a page-turning account of the...
Published 11 days ago by Bluebell
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great fun, but read with caution
Packed with facts and anecdotes this book will fuel your dinner party conversations for years to come.
Published 12 days ago by Magpie
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lot to Read
The fruit of a prodigious amount of research, and a lot to read. Jerusalem touches on (and is claimed to be a cornerstone of) much of world history both religious and political...
Published 19 days ago by Howard Somerville
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jerusalem-city of hatred, city of blood
The famous British historian Edward Gibbon once wrote that "history is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of the human kind".
Published 20 days ago by Paul Gelman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than any novel!
Sex, incest, murder, fratricide, regicide, murder, massacre, sadism, war, famine, intrigue, politics, religion and a social history of a much troubled city.
Published 20 days ago by Mr. K. Allman
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book of importance
Few cities in the world have the history and religious importance of Jerusalem. Yet the history of this important city is little known.
Published 26 days ago by Zlata Konevski
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jerusalem
A very comprehensive and detailed run through of the trials and tribulations of this very sacred city from before the common era pretty much to today.
Published 26 days ago by avidreader
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