A fascinating account of the tumultuous history of one of the most troubled and important cities in the world by a brilliant historian. How has the city become so hopelessly divided and will it always be so? Is a solution possible and what has been the fate of earlier attempts to reconcile the different communities? Bernard Wasserstein examines the often unhappy history of the Holy City - one of the most contentious places in the world. Wasserstein shows how, throughout modern history,

Jerusalem has been exploited for the ulterior purposes of many powers. The religious devotion of masses of Christians, Muslims and Jews throughout the world, he argues, has been manipulated for often squalid ends. Wasserstein contends that a long-term solution to the Jerusalem question must involve recognition of current social reality: a city that in almost every way is irrevocably divided. Against the background of renewed violence in and around Jerusalem, this book offers a timely and illuminating contribution towards the effort to achieve a negotiated settlement of a tragic conflict that, in one way or another, affects us all.

Author Biography: Bernard Wasserstein is Professor of History at Glasgow University and visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was Director of the Oxford Centre for Jewish Studies. His many books include The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln, which won the Golden Dagger Award for Non-fiction and the controversial Vanishing Diaspora. Bernard Wasserstein is President of the Jewish Historical Society of England. FROM THE CRITICS Thomas W. Lippman [A] lively and provocative new history .

. Wasserstein has produced a crisply written and irony-laced account of [Jerusalem] (Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post Book World Amos Elon - The New York Review Wasserstein . . . writes clearly and dispassionately on a theme that has been more cliché-ridden than most. Thomas Lippman - Washington Post Book World, Book World Raves-Nonfiction Crisply written, irony-laced. Frank McLynn A book which deserves praise for its meticulous scholarship, cool judgment, and even-handed, non-partisan consideration of an impossible problem. -The Glasgow Herald Hyam Maccoby A valuable and lucid analysis of just how divided Jerusalem is. -Evening Standard .