Jerusalem, The biography

Perhaps it was inevitable that the first thousand or so years chronicled in this history of the city of Jerusalem read like a catalog of characters and events defined by greed and cruelty. The book became, for me, more than just good intellectual medicine the closer it got to the twentieth century, where the lives of ordinary Jerusalemites navigating the fractures and completing religious and social agendas become part of the narrative. There is plenty of information to help explain why competing groups regard Jerusalem as their Zion and, with this knowledge, may come the possibility of real dialog.