Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297798022 ISBN 13: 9780297798026

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990

Amos Elon's Jerusalem: Battlegrounds of Memory is a fascinating exploration of an enduring mystery: How did a small city that is inherently difficult to defend from attack, that lies far from key trade routes and vital bodies of water, and that has never boasted an essential commercial or strategic reason for being, capture the imagination of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for the past three millenia? The answers to this enigma unfold with brilliant style and lively erudition in the pages of a book reviewers have called a "sweeping and eloquent meditation" and a "masterful biography of a city."

About the Author:

Amos Elon has spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem. A frequent essayist, lecturer and critic who is well known for his articles in the `New Yorker' and `New York Review of Books', he is the author of the bestseller `The Israelis: `Founder' s and Sons', `Flight into Egypt', `Herzl: A Biography' and `Jerusalem: City of Mirrors' (also published by Flamingo).

From Publishers Weekly:

Modern Jerusalem, in Elon's words, is "a breeding ground of ghettos." Israelis and Palestinians continue to work and live apart from one another; the city fissures into four rough quadrangles--Moslem, Jewish, Christian, Armenian--each with its own religion, its distinctive tongue or tongues. In a rich, beautifully written, impartial meditation that is also a healing act, Elon, noted Israeli author and journalist ( Herzl ; The Israelis: Founders and Sons ), measures the clarity of Jerusalem's biblical landscape against a past and present choked with religious and political strife. For a host of pilgrims from Dominican friar Felix Fabri to Mark Twain, Chateaubriand and Gogol, Jerusalem has served as a mirror of faith, despair, hope or disbelief. Elon, a contemporary wanderer through Jerusalem, as well as a long-time resident, sadly finds that the modern city "has almost always been intolerant and exclusivist."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.