I have been to Jerusalem twice. The first time was with my parents in 1974. The second time was with D’Aun and friends from church. It’s an incredible place, with history piled on top of history. Each corner, square, block, tree, gate and courtyard seems to have major historical significance.

Sacred to the three major monotheistic religions, billions of the faithful revere Jerusalem as the center of the world. It represents the promise of heaven to come and ultimately it is ground zero for where Heaven will establish a Kingdom on earth. Such vision stirs a passionate confluence of hope, fear, pride and humility. One of the oldest cities in the world, Jerusalem also has one of the bloodiest histories.

Simon Sebag Montefiore has written Jerusalem: The Biography with an eye toward telling the story of the city in a new way. I like the idea of writing a book about a city as a biography because it takes the book into new territories that travel guides and history books cannot explore. Montefiore explores the nature of the city, why it draws such a wide cast of characters, and how it seems to always be at the heartbeat of the world.

A lot of that is subjective, hard to define, and is shaped by the writers perspective. It’s hard not to project your own emotions onto a city like Jerusalem. This book minimizes that for the most part, but it is still going to irritate a lot of people. You can’t write a book about Jerusalem and make everybody happy.

Still, Montefiore makes a valiant effort to create a book that people of all faiths and persuasions can read. It follows a chronilogical timeline as it explores religions, conquerers, world events, miracles, atrocities, empires, politics, and the arts. Sometimes it seems like a whirlwind ride. Even at nearly 700-pages the author has to minimize a lot of things to keep the book moving forward.

Ultimately, I found the book well worth reading. It is not a “great” book, in my opinion, but then I’m not sure anybody could write a book like this and make it great. There are too many untold stories and too many differing opinions in the 3000 year history of Jerusalem to ever cover it all. But I enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about the city. So for me, it was well worth my time.