This book is the first to engage with the full range of American travel writing about nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine, and the first to acknowledge the influence of the late-eighteenth-century Barbary captivity narrative on nineteenth-century travel writing about the Middle East. Brian Yothers argues that American travel writing about the Holy Land forms a coherent, if greatly varied, tradition, which can only be fully understood when works by major writers such as Twain and Melville are studied alongside missionary accounts, captivity narratives, chronicles of religious pilgrimages, and travel writing in the genteel tradition. Yothers also examines works by lesser-known authors such as Bayard Taylor, John Lloyd Stephens, and Clorinda Minor, demonstrating that American travel writing is marked by a profound intertextuality with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and with British and continental travel narratives about the Holy Land. His concluding chapter on Melville's Clarel shows how Melville's poem provides an incisive critique of the nascent imperial discourse discernible in the American texts with which it is in dialogue.

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This travel guide focuses on places that Holy Land tour groups typically visit and gives major attention to connections between the Bible and the land. The Holy Land is understood to overlap both present-day Israel and Jordan, so places like Gilead, Mount Nebo, Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan, and Petra are included. And while the biblical periods and biblical connections remain in the forefront, these are explored in the context of the Holy Land's long and fascinating history. Ancient "tells" dating back to the Bronze Age, colonnaded streets and temples from Hellenistic and Roman times, early Christian pilgrimage destinations, Crusader castles, Mamluk and Ottoman fortifications--all illustrated with chronological charts, maps, site plans, and photographs.