Mapping the Holy Land: An Illustrated Atlas

A stunning journey through the Holy Land, as told by the rare maps and prints that have long inspired Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrimages.

From the earliest days of the Roman Empire to the current war between Israel and Hamas, mapping the Holy Land has been a never-ending source of high aspirations and bitter conflict. Sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the Holy Land has always inspired Christians to walk in the footsteps of the Bible, to imagine the route of the Exodus, or discover the places of Jesus' ministry. Muslims, too, longed to see the geographical contours of the ummah, the greater Muslim community, while Jews remembered the days when Jerusalem was the destination for three holy festivals. In response, cartographers from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age drew their inspiration from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrimages to depict, with growing confidence, the exotic locations of the Holy Land.

Mapping the Holy Land is the first book to tell the thrilling story of these travels and the incredible prints and maps they spawned, up to the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Illustrated with rare, hand-colored maps and engravings throughout and riveting scene-setting history, this remarkable volume from rare maps collector Neal Asbury, CEO of The Legacy Companies and host of Neal Asbury's Made in America, and National Geographic best-selling author Jean-Pierre Isbouts, coauthors of Mapping America, shows how the faithful overcame impossible odds to reach the Holy Land, and dives deep into the historical understanding of these elusive lands from Roman times up to the modern Israeli-Arab conflict.

Dr. Neal Asbury is a global entrepreneur, CEO of The Legacy Companies, and the host of the nationally syndicated weekly radio talk show Neal Asbury's Made in America, produced by Radio America. He is the coauthor of Mapping America: The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States and the author of Conscientious Equity: An American Entrepreneur's Solutions to the World's Greatest Problems. Asbury has received the President's "E-Star" Export Award and the Export Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce and was the 2008 recipient of the United States National Champion Exporter of the Year Award. A frequent guest on CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC, he has published more than two hundred articles on global trade issues. Asbury lives in Weston, Florida.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Isbouts is a historian, professor emeritus at Fielding Graduate University, and the author or coauthor of multiple books, including Mapping America: The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States, The da Vinci Legacy, The Dalí Legacy, National Geographic's The Ultimate Visual History of the World, The Biblical World, and In the Footsteps of Jesus, which together have sold over two million copies. Dr. Isbouts has been on numerous radio and TV shows and is the host of several TV series for The Great Courses, including the best-selling The History and Archaeology of the Bible, In the Footsteps of Vincent van Gogh, and Searching for the Historical Jesus. He has also directed several programs for Disney, ABC, Hallmark, and the History Channel, working with actors such as Leonard Nimoy, Charlton Heston, Dick Van Dyke, and Morgan Freeman, and produced recordings with orchestras around the world. Dr. Isbouts lives in Santa Monica, California.