Road Reads

Road Reads
"Where God Was Born," by Bruce Feiler

Sunday, December 25, 2005; P02

BOOK: "Where God Was Born," by Bruce Feiler (William Morrow, $26.95)

TARGET AUDIENCE: People who forget that Babylon was and is a real place.

"I was wading waist deep in the freezing, raw sewage of Jerusalem in some quixotic attempt to discover how King David had captured his capital." Bruce Feiler ("Walking the Bible," "Abraham") is back for another round of full-contact biblical archaeology in the Middle East, this time trying to reconcile its struggle between faith and ruthless violence by "reading the stories of the Bible in the places where they occurred." That means exploring Israel, Iran and Iraq, often putting himself in danger.

Can Islam, Judaism and Christianity coexist? Feiler seems predisposed to hear optimistic answers. He acknowledges his own struggles of faith, but in an unpreachy way, and it doesn't hinder his telling of a great travel story, with its grab bag of details: Ur, the city where Abraham was married, is also the site of Iraq's first Pizza Hut; the ancient Sumerians had a goddess of beer (Ninkasi); smog hangs over Tehran "like dirt around the Peanuts character Pigpen."

-- Jerry V. Haines