“Jerusalem: The Biography”, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

688 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0307266514

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore is an impressive effort born from a combination of intelligence, scholarship and superb talent. The City of Jerusalem needed such a biographer such as Montefiore. Many writers and scholars have approached this subject in different ways, rivers of words had flown about the universal city, but nobody had offered such a vibrant panoramic and punctual view before, for in many respects the history of Jerusalem is the history of world. It is difficult to talk about any emperor, king, ruler, and sultan of the past and not to mention Jerusalem; indeed, it is difficult today to open a newspaper and not to find an article on Jerusalem. For millennia, Jerusalem was a formidable center of attention; everybody wanted to be involved with this city, conquer it, destroy it, rebuild it, subjugated it, visit it. Jerusalem is the protagonist of the Bible; it is history and legend; Jerusalem is on earth and is also the only city that exists in Heaven. So strong and so fragile, it needed to have another dimension to survive all the offenses received. It is the capital of two people, the shrine of the three Abrahamic faiths, and the place where the Apocalypse will take place. An ancient city layered with hope and desperation whose tragic destiny was always shaped, for various reasons, from far away.

An incredibly long and complicated history like the one Montefiore tells begins in 5000 BC and ends today in 1967, and throughout the author manages to maintain the impartiality of the historian in such a delicate and ignitable matter. He feels that the meaning of his book is to show how both parts, the two people (Palestinians and Israelis) have their own reasons, rights, and history, and they both finally deserve peace. The author also stated that he wants just to pursue the facts, not to judge the mysteries of the different religions, and he writes about Judaism, Christianity and Islam dispassionately, often dissipating the confusion that can naturally rise between history and religious tradition.

The structure of the book cleverly allows the reader to have an easy access to it. The narration has a smooth chronological development and it's divided in nine main parts which are in turn divided in chapters, each dedicated to a character and his/her lineage. Thanks to this agile structure, the reader can chose to go directly to the chapters of his primary interest or just follow the sequence, and easily find himself reading every single page, captured by the flowing of the events and propelled by the light of new curiosities. Montefiore’s style is dense, measured, and so pleasantly fluid. He is able to masterfully depict the characters that troubled and made Jerusalem thrive like a painter; with but a few essential brushstrokes Montefiore can describe their personality, features, qualities and destinies. The succession of the events is fast but always controlled and lightened by juicy curiosities, evocative atmospheres (and by the author’s tactful sense of humor).

Jerusalem is vividly described in its evolving features, the great architecture constructions (made, as it happens, recycling the material of the predecessors), the dusty roads, the walls, the hills, the heat. Jerusalem with her busy inhabitants, the markets, the waves of thousands of pilgrims, the sacrifices, the smell of the burned meat of tons of lambs. The traffic in the temple, the high priests (who often ended up slaughtered), the massacres, the stench of the dead bodies, the invasions (strategically often perpetrated during the Sabbath), the mass crucifixions, the screams of the ones thrown down of the walls, the madness and the fear in the streets. The whores, the lust, the vices. The political reasons and the religious sentiments of the rulers, their family and subordinates brought to thriving moments, sudden reversals of fortune, imaginative intrigues, repetitive killing of family members, imprisonments and changeable alliances. With no peace, Jerusalem saw thousands inhabitants given to slavery, new migrations repopulating the city and the cyclical persecutions against the Jews, in a scary alternation of tolerance and intolerance.

This magnum opus is both a tool for the knowledge and a lively biography, a scholarly book meant to be appreciated by readers of different levels. It can satisfy readers interested in history, religion, civilizations, international cultures, art, archeology, human behavior, family ties, war strategies, political balances and unbalances, romance, or just any curious reader. In short, Jerusalem: The Biography is almost the perfect book.

“Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1-July 4, 1776”, by William Hogeland

288 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-1416584094

On May 1^st, 1776, Pennsylvania said NO to independence when voters turned out and, in the nearest thing to a referendum on independence, voted it down. In reality, they voted for a form of state government that, in and of itself, precluded support of the colony’s representatives to the Continental Congress for independence. It had been a long and difficult battle for John Dickerson and marked the beginning of a series of behind-the-scenes meetings and actions by Samuel Adams that could be considered nothing short of a conspiracy to declare independence.

This is only one of the many little-known stories told by William Hogeland in Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1-July 4, 1776. Fascinating, beautiful, eloquent and timely – this is how men accomplish greatness when ambitions rise above greed and the shared good of the common all replaces privileges for an elite few. Hogeland outlines the clash between two great ideas: the Tory commitment to the status quo of banks, business and property; and the Whig rights of workers, farmers and the militias. The focus is on one topic: the right to be independent of a government that ignored the best interests of the people and instead supported an old and unresponsive Establishment.

Hogeland deftly outlines two powerful forces for independence: the Southern aristocratic desire for a kingless state; and the Northern quest for virtuous and least corruptible government based on town meetings. The differences, resolved from May 1^st to July 2^nd, 1776, overcame the Virginia opposition to independence which otherwise would have doomed the colonies. Without union, the British could have pitted colonies against each other to crush the conflict which had begun the spring of 1775. Delegates who debated independence or reconciliation met under the immediate threat of a British invasion fleet carrying at least 13,000 Hessian mercenaries.

Some of the men who advocated independence include Benjamin Rush, who later became the chief doctor of the Continental Army and who wanted “to improve diet and reduce drinking among the American poor, to help them rise from squalor by bettering themselves”, and Herman Husband, a preacher and Pennsylvania assembly member in 1776, who “wanted taxes on income and wealth, and he wanted them to be progressive…[h]e wanted a public program to make old people financially secure”, and John Adams, an elite lawyer from Massachusetts who “wanted above all to prevent democratic populism there…in the end Adams succeeded” (incidentally, Pennsylvania’s new constitution “regulated monopolies…refused to charter a bank they believed served the rich at the expense of the poor…pushed back against predatory credit and foreclosure, forcing the lending class to accept discounted payments”).

Such was the diversity of independence; the issues they debated are still at the heart of American politics, and this book is a superb introduction to those arguments, passions and triumphs.

“How the States Got Their Shapes”, by Mark Stein

352 pages, Smithsonian, ISBN-13: 978-0061431388

When most people look at a map of the United States, they take its current borders for granted. Most people can identify a state simply by its shape, but will rarely ask why it has said shape. How the States Got Their Shapes answers most questions anyone would probably have about how each state got its shape. It is interesting to read the stories about how east coast states were drawn by monarchs for whatever reasons they wanted, or how Congress started to organize land when one moves westward across the map. Stein details the tragic-yet-fascinating stories about how Congress organized new states in a futile attempt to control slavery so as to avert civil war, and how those decisions are now permanently embedded in the borders of several states. After Congress gave up controlling slavery in favor of popular sovereignty, you will read about how equality of size or resources formed the shape of western states.

This book also answers some questions like: why is California and Texas so big; why do so many states have little quirks in their borders; why all the panhandles, West Virginia’s finger, Connecticut’s notch, and so on. However, if I ever had a chance to talk with the author I’d ask him to rewrite this book chronologically, rather than alphabetically by state. It would start from the earliest European colonies and would follow along by date, showing all of the innumerable map changes as they happen and explaining why. That would allow the reader to follow along as the changes are made, as opposed to leaping back and forth in time as this book does now.

Over all, this book is well-written and pithy. Don’t expect a huge narrative, partly because there isn’t much to tell beyond a brief description, but the book, state by state, describes all the borders and the various reasons why the borders look that way they do. The virgin land that the Europeans had available for partitioning the states is immediately obvious in reading this book and it is a true wealth of information that is sure to interest anyone interested in maps, geography, and American history.