Jerusalem: The Biography

* * These writers were following a fashion for oriental travelogues. Between 1800 and 1875, about 5,000 books were published in English about Jerusalem. Many of these works are remarkably similar, either breathless repetitions of biblical stories by evangelicals (sometimes reinforced by archaeology) or travelogues mocking Ottoman incompetence, Jewish wailing, Arab simplicity and Orthodox vulgarity. The witty Eothen by Alexander Kinglake, who later reported on the Crimean War, is probably the best