Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden

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 scientists and theologians alike, including the first president of Boston University and a knighted British engineer. Today the search has been taken up by amateurs. These quixotic seekers all started with the same simple-sounding Bible verses, but ended up at a different spot on the globe: Florida, the North Pole, Ohio, China, and, of course, Iraq. Inspired by an Eden seeker in her own family, Wilensky-Lanford writes of these unusual men and women with sympathy and wit. Paradise Lust is a century-spanning history that provokes surprising insights into where we came from, what we did wrong, and where we go from here.