Jerusalem's Temple Mount: From Solomon to the Golden Dome

Filled with interesting full-color photographs, reconstruction drawings, and charts accompanied by excellent descriptions, this is a useful survey of the history of the Temple Mount, by the founder and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review . With a journalist's eye for what is interesting, Shanks takes the reader backward through the history of the area, from the current state to its early period. The book is replete with archaeological details, history and legends, inscriptions, changing interpretations, and even discussions of forgeries. One learns of the various rival, overlapping, and fluid claims of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, while following how the archaeological details illuminate the various historical developments in clear, concise language geared to the non-specialist. - Jewish Book World

The colored photographs are beautiful, and the architectural projections illuminating. The text distills a great deal of scholarship into readable prose...A few years ago I mentioned favorably in this column Simon Goldhill's The Temple of Jerusalem (Harvard University Press), but if I had to choose between the two, I'd go with Shanks' book, if only because it is so beautifully illustrated. It will help students and teachers visualize Solomon's great building program. Lawrence S. Cunningham, Commonweal, February 29, 2008--Sanford Lakoff