For cen­turies, trav­el­ers have been drawn to the stun­ning and mys­te­ri­ous Dead Sea and Jor­dan Riv­er, a region which is unlike any oth­er on Earth in its reli­gious and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. In this excep­tion­al­ly engag­ing and read­able book, Bar­bara Kreiger chron­i­cles the nat­ur­al and human his­to­ry of these sto­ried bod­ies of water, draw­ing on accounts by trav­el­ers, pil­grims, and explor­ers from ancient times to the present. She con­veys the blend of spir­i­tu­al, touris­tic, and sci­en­tif­ic moti­va­tions that have dri­ven explo­ration and describes the mod­ern exploita­tion of the lake and the sur­round­ing area through min­er­al extrac­tion and agri­cul­ture. Today, both lake and riv­er are in cri­sis, and stew­ard­ship of these water resources is bound up with polit­i­cal con­flicts in the region. The Dead Sea and the Jor­dan Riv­er com­bines his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, trav­el­ogue, and nat­ur­al his­to­ry in a vol­ume read­ers will be sur­prised to find hard to put down.

Dis­cov­er­ing the Dead Sea from a Dif­fer­ent, Not-So-Dis­tant Shore

Beau­ti­ful Because It Sim­ply Is