Talks & Entertainment

Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World uncovers how Jerusalem became, unlike any other city in the world, an incendiary fantasy of a city. Central to the religious imagination, it has been the holy of holies, but it has also been a cockpit of violence.

Tracing Jewish, Christian, and Muslim history, Carroll illuminates the mounting European fixation on Jerusalem as spark of both anti-Semitism and racist colonial contempt. Each religion is tempted to violence, and each finds ways to resist violence. Such deep history has relevance for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. No accident that this conflict is centered on Jerusalem—which is both the problem and the solution.

Carroll’s books include Practicing Catholic, the National Book Award–winning An American Requiem, House of War, and the New York Times bestseller Constantine’s Sword, now an acclaimed documentary.