Now for the first time in trade paperback, Michener's magnificent and spellbinding expedition through the history of the Holy Land, the source of Western religious and cultural heritage.

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For the next four years, he and a team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling. This book tells the story of those four years and paints a picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with its immense, terracotta-tiled cupola, retains a rare power to astonish. This book tells the story of how the cupola was raised, from its conception to its consecration.

* The Australian answer to GONE WITH THE WIND * 'One of the biggest-selling, most widely read books in the history of fiction' Observer

Now for the first time in trade paperback.