Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine

What was it like to live in the time of Jesus?

What did people eat? Whom did they marry? How did they keep themselves clean? What did their cities and towns look like? What did they believe?

The answers, it turns out, are surprising. This simple question is not so simple after all. With a historian's insight and a reporter's curiosity, Scott Korb gives us a backstage pass to the unexpected and sometimes down-and-dirty truth about what everyday life was like in first-century Palestine, that tumultuous era when the Roman Empire was at its zenith and a new religion-Christianity-was born.

"An energetic portrait of the Middle East during the time of Jesus." NPR

"A society both familiar and strange emerges from this absorbing historical study...a lively romp through the land of Palestine." Publishers Weekly

"A generally historical, fun look at life during the time of Jesus." Kirkus Reviews

Scott Korb is the co-author of The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and graduate degrees from Union Seminary and Columbia University. He has written for Harper's, Gastronomica, the Revealer, and Commonweal. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.