Winner of the Archeological Institute of America's Felicia A. Holton Book Award

“In Under Jerusalem, journalist Andrew Lawler directs our contemplation away from the heavenly city, and down into the roots of history and faith. . . Mr. Lawler, unlike so many of his characters, navigates the terrain without offending the political or religious sensibilities of his subjects. . . In a city where the winner takes all, Mr. Lawler does an admirable job of striving for the diplomats’ ideal of ‘evenhandedness.’ ”
—Wall Street Journal

“Under Jerusalem is a brilliant, highly innovative history of the most contested city on the planet. Andrew Lawler uses these untold stories of archeological digs near and under Jerusalem’s sacred sites to convey all the colorful and violent and contentious history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is an astounding achievement—and a compulsive read.”
 —Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of The Outlier and The Good Spy

"Magisterial. . . [A] fast-paced adventury-story account. . . This is a spellbinding book—and a reminder that, just when one might have imagined that nothing new could be written about Jerusalem, there is still more to be found beneath its surface."
—Moment Magazine

"What lies beneath? Lawler knows. Evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of ancient and modern Jerusalem, he introduces the reader to a myriad of archaeologists and other colorful characters, all concerned with unearthing the ancient remains of the city, frequently while grappling with thorny modern political, ideological, and theological issues. A must read for anyone interested in either the history or archaeology of Jerusalem."
—Eric H. Cline, bestselling author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
 
“Every review of Andrew Lawler's book about the wild archaeological history of Jerusalem will mention Indiana Jones. This is not because the characters he describes are much like Jones—they're much more obsessed, more bonkers, or more mendacious—but because the Indiana Jones stories are among the few examples we have of stories about archaeology that are pure fun. Well, now there is another one, just as swashbuckling as the Spielberg movies, but with the added advantage of being all true."
—Charles C. Mann, New York Times bestselling author of 1491 and The Wizard and the Prophet

“Lawler’s history tracks both the marvels found underground and the events unfolding above them… Probing excavators’ often partisan motivations, Lawler highlights archeology’s power to shape narratives and its development from a discipline ‘not far removed from its far older cousin, tomb robbing,’ into a modern tool of nationalist mythmaking.”
—New Yorker

“A sweeping tale of archaeological exploits and their cultural and political consequences told with a historian’s penchant for detail and a journalist’s flair for narration. . . [Lawler] displays remarkable evenhandedness in cataloguing the politicization of archaeology today. . . Lawler’s timely book [shows] how and why ordinary men and women, and great empires alike, continue to seek meaning in the dirt and debris beneath this magnetic, confounding city.”
—Washington Post

“Engrossing [and] exhaustively researched. . . This book may be non-fiction, but it reads like a fast-moving and suspenseful Indiana Jones thriller. . . A captivating exploration of a Jerusalem’s buried history.”
—The Times of Israel

“It’s hard to imagine a definitive book being written about such a complicated subject, but this one is as close as it gets. Lawler gives a comprehensive, even-handed, clear-headed story about one of the most argued over pieces of land on the earth. But this is no dry treatise. It’s more of an adventure story with the main characters being archeologists and treasure seekers. Lovers of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark won’t be disappointed.”
—New York Journal of Books

ANDREW LAWLER is author of the bestselling The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and the acclaimed Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. He is a contributing writer for Science and a contributing editor for Archaeology. Lawler's work has appeared several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing.