Joshua Hammer is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, The Falcon Thief, and The Mesopotamian Riddle. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Outside. He lives in Berlin.
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"Listening to this history of the 1850s competition to decipher ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions is like listening to a Jules Verne or Conan Doyle adventure yarn. Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies is a familiar voice in mystery and suspense fiction, and he clearly relishes what is not a musty story of scholarly reflection, but a cliff-hanger full of surprises and unexpected twists. Davies is a wonderful narrator for this kind of work, droll and cosmopolitan and silken to the ear. The process of decipherment will especially appeal to fans of espionage and decoding. But against the backdrop of Europe’s historical relations with the Middle East, this is a story with many layers—and many buried treasures."
—AudioFile Magazine
“[An] epic intellectual adventure... Mr. Hammer’s ability to skip from philology to Great Game intrigue, from biblical sources to the ‘Assyria fever’ that swept London, is extraordinary.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Written with brilliant characterization and edge-of-your-armchair suspense. As in the best detective novels, the story of those who uncover the mystery is as intriguing as the mystery itself.”
—Julian Sancton, New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth
“This tale of dusty scholars could have been as dry as the desert. But... Mr. Hammer makes dead languages speak again.”
—The Economist
“Joshua Hammer is a marvelous storyteller, and he has grabbed hold of one of history’s great yarns. His rollicking tale, combining intellectual heft and fast-paced vigor, places readers ringside as rivals struggle with a deciphering mystery that had stymied the world for two thousand years.”
—Edward Dolnick, New York Times bestselling author of The Writing of the Gods
“Stirring.... [An] elegantly written, fascinating account.”
—Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“An adventure tale for puzzle lovers and Indiana Jones fans alike.”
—Washington Post
"The Mesopotamian Riddle is equal parts enthralling and erudite, a story of linguists who battled marauding bandits, diseases and disasters . . . with nothing less than the veracity of the Hebrew scriptures and the roots of western civilization at stake."
—Barbara Demick, author of Eat the Buddha
“A riveting and revelatory story of rivalry, secrets buried for centuries, and the long quest for the truth.”
—David E. Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy
“Joshua Hammer tells a splendid tale.”
—Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire
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