The elusive Crusader Gold: the greatest prize missing from the final bloody conflict of the Crusades. Believed to be the Jewish menorah, the huge golden candlestick looted by the Romans in AD70 when they sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and marched through Rome in triumph, it was carried off to Constantinople. Now, nobody knows where it is. Some Jewish activists today think it survived and is concealed in the Vatican. Some think it took altogether more extraordinary turn, at the beginning of history itself. Jack Howard is the only man who can find out. But the clock is ticking against him. Will ancient history give up one of its darkest secrets? The quest to find out takes him from the Roman Empire to the last days of Nazi power - and uncovers a trail more thrilling than anyone ever imagined.
David Gibbins has worked in underwater archaeology all his professional life. After taking a PhD from Cambridge University he taught archaeology in Britain and abroad, and is a world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. He has led numerous expeditions to investigate underwater sites in the Mediterranean and around the world. He currently divides his time between fieldwork, England and Canada.
Show moreThe elusive Crusader Gold: the greatest prize missing from the final bloody conflict of the Crusades. Believed to be the Jewish menorah, the huge golden candlestick looted by the Romans in AD70 when they sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and marched through Rome in triumph, it was carried off to Constantinople. Now, nobody knows where it is. Some Jewish activists today think it survived and is concealed in the Vatican. Some think it took altogether more extraordinary turn, at the beginning of history itself. Jack Howard is the only man who can find out. But the clock is ticking against him. Will ancient history give up one of its darkest secrets? The quest to find out takes him from the Roman Empire to the last days of Nazi power - and uncovers a trail more thrilling than anyone ever imagined.
David Gibbins has worked in underwater archaeology all his professional life. After taking a PhD from Cambridge University he taught archaeology in Britain and abroad, and is a world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. He has led numerous expeditions to investigate underwater sites in the Mediterranean and around the world. He currently divides his time between fieldwork, England and Canada.
Show more'What do you get if you cross Indiana Jones with Dan Brown? Answer: David Gibbins' Mirror
'What do you get if you cross Indiana Jones with Dan Brown? Answer: David Gibbins' Mirror
David Gibbins has worked in underwater archaeology all his professional life. After taking a PhD from Cambridge University he taught archaeology in Britain and abroad, and is a world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. He has led numerous expeditions to investigate underwater sites in the Mediterranean and around the world. He currently divides his time between fieldwork, England and Canada.
In Gibbins's sequel to Atlantis, marine archeologist Jack Howard searches for an ancient gold menorah seized by Vespasian's army during the sack of Jerusalem. While Jack and his team of scientists and historians follow clues from Istanbul and England to the Arctic, Canada and Mexico, a group of neo-Nazis (who have co-opted an organization as old as the Crusades and dedicated to the relic's safety) conspire to find and use the menorah to destabilize the world's religions. Stilted exposition, in which Jack details large chunks of history for colleagues who should already know it, mars an otherwise interesting backstory, and cardboard characters rouse little sympathy. Elsewhere, an overwhelming surfeit of detail serves at best to drag down the suspense, at worst to cause terminal confusion. Those with an already-strong sense of Roman, barbarian, Viking and English history, as well as those with a sincere desire to learn, will appreciate Gibbins's alternate history of King Harald Hardrada's defeat, if not necessarily the teacherly style or clunky adventure story in which it's couched. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
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