Simon Sebag Montefiore is the premier historian of his generation. His STALIN: The Court of the Red Tsar was a Sunday Times bestseller, selling 50,000 copies in hb and 150,000 copies (so far) in pb. His books get fabulous reviews. Antony Beevor wrote in the Daily Telegraph of STALIN: 'Outstanding ... fascinating with a weath of new material ... [gives a completely fresh light to the era.'
Born in 1965 Simon Sebag Montefiore is a biographer, novelist and journalist. He contributes to The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The New York Republic and New York Times in the USA. In the early nineties he travelled through the turbulent ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia and in 1996 presented a Channel 4 documentary on his 2000 mile desert quest for slavery in Mauritania. He now lives in London with his wife, Santa, nee Palmer-Tomkinson, and two children. His two biographies, PRINCE OF PRINCES: the Life of Potemkin and STALIN: COURT OF THE RED TSAR were huge successes in hardback and paperback, and have been published all over the world. In 2007 YOUNG STALIN will be published.
A fittingly vast and dazzling portrait of Jerusalem, utterly
compelling from start to finish.
*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.
*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.
*THE TIMES*
Outstanding, superbly objective, elegantly written and highly
entertaining
*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
*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.
*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
*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.
*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.
*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
*INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY*
This is [a] compendious and fleet-footed history of a city
*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.
*DAILY EXPRESS*
a tour de force
*SPECTATOR*
Montefiore has constructed a narrative that has a pleasing flow and
more than does justice to his subject...his history is remarkably
clear-eyed and even-handed whether recounting tales of Jewish,
Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman or British rulers of
the city.
*SUNDAY HERALD, GLASGOW*
Religion is not an abstract theory...It involves the story of
people's actual encounters with God. Simon Sebag Montefiore
understands this...his lack of theological training... makes him
exceptionally sympathetic to the city whose story he tells. He is
not trying to impose some theory upon it. He just wants to tell the
tale of its terrible, beautiful, God-intoxicated, squalid (and
surprisingly louche) life...There is never a dull page.
*DAILY TELEGRAPH*
superb
*WALL STREET JOURNAL*
compelling...it is a tribute to the author's skill that he has been
able to make 672 pages highly readable.
*CATHOLIC HERALD*
As a writer, Mr Montefiore has an elegant turn of phrase and an
unerring ear for the anecdote that will cut to the heart of a
story. When Queen Victoria's son, the 20-year-old Prince of Wales
and future King Edward VII, rode into Jerusalem in 1862, escorted
by 100 Ottoman cavalrymen, the plump princeling could think of
little else but getting a Crusader tattoo on his arm... It is this
kind of detail that makes "Jerusalem" a particular joy to read.
*THE ECONOMIST*
authoritative and illuminating...Cantering through 3,000 years of
dramatic history at a lively pace and with never a dull moment in
the 500-odd pages... I found the chapters about the British rule in
the region especially fascinating...[a] commendable analysis
*THE OLDIE*
Sebag Montefiore made a judicious choice in privileging the modern
era while not neglecting any important chapter in the city's
history. This reviewer... was impressed by Sebag Montefiore's
ability to find the right tone, and to retain a fair approach to
Jerusalem's history.
*TLS*
Anyone with an interest in history should read this, if only to be
reminded of just how much history has rolled back and forth over
this pile of stones between 1458 and today. In fact, when compared
with the carnage visited on it by the Romans, Crusaders, Albanians
and, in the 12th century, the teenage King of Norway, the last 100
years there have been relatively peaceful.
*THE WORD MAGAZINE - 10 Best Books of 2011*
Few historians have demonstrated the vision, mastery, and boldness necessary to publish on a subject so vast and in such detail as Montefiore (Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar). Since Jerusalem's origins as a settlement more than 5000 years ago, its history, in the author's citation of 19th-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, is "the history of the world." Montefiore explains the city's significance to the three Abrahamic faiths, the idiosyncrasies of its builders and conquerors, and the persistent perception there of a "divine presence." Montefiore starts with King David (he takes the Old Testament as the historical source), gets to the "quixotic and risky but pious" Crusades about halfway through the book, and goes on to note such "pilgrims" as Rasputin and Mark Twain. He confronts challenging questions, including the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E. and by Titus in 70 C.E. and the remarkable "Dome of the Rock," and he moves onward to the creation of modern Israel. VERDICT A marvelous panorama for all readers with an interest in religious studies or world history. [See Prepub Alert, 4/4/11.]-Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.-Erie (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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