It seems that ever since mankind was kicked out of the
Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, we’ve been
trying to get back in. Or at least, we’ve been wondering
where the Garden might have been. St. Augustine had a
theory, and so did medieval monks, John Calvin, and
Christopher Columbus. But when Darwin’s theory of evolution
permanently altered our understanding of human origins,
shouldn’t the search for a literal Eden have faded away? Not
so fast.
In Paradise Lust, Brook Wilensky-Lanford introduces readers
to the enduring modern quest to locate the Garden of Eden on
Earth. It is an obsession that has consumed Mesopotamian
archaeologists, German Baptist ministers, British irrigation
engineers, and the first president of Boston University,
among many others. These quixotic Eden seekers all started
with the same brief Bible verses, but each ended up at a
different spot on the globe: Florida, the North Pole, Ohio,
China, and, of course, Iraq. Evocative of Tony Horwitz and
Sarah Vowell, Wilensky-Lanford writes of these unusual
characters and their search with sympathy and wit. Charming,
enlightening, and utterly unique, Paradise Lust is a
century-spanning history that will take you to places you
never imagined.
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