"Jerusalem: The Biography" was named book of the year on Tuesday by the Jewish Book Council.

The council's National Jewish Book Awards, in their 61st year, honor a healthy number of books of Jewish interest.

Also high on this list this year is Art Spiegelman's "MetaMaus," which won in the biography/autobiography/memoir category.

Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem" is fascinating history, said a review last year in the New York Times:

Open “Jerusalem” at random, like a Bible, and discover something gruesome: on Page 4, Roman soldiers are crucifying 500 Jews a day in the run-up to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70; on Page 75, Alexander Jannaeus, a much-loathed Jewish king of the first century B.C., after slaughtering 50,000 of his own people, celebrates his victory “by cavorting with his concubines at a feast while watching 800 rebels being crucified around the hills.” Crucifixion was so common in the ancient world, Montefiore notes in one of his many fascinating asides, that Jews and gentiles alike had taken to wearing nails from victims as charms, anticipating what became a Christian tradition. And when the population dwindled — as after the First Crusade, which like a neutron bomb eliminated the infidels but preserved the holy places — you could always dash across the Jordan, like Baldwin the crusader king in 1115, and bring back “poverty-stricken Syrian and Armenian Christians, whom he invited to settle in Jerusalem, ancestors of today’s Palestinian Christians.”

To see the entire list of Jewish Book Awards, which will be handed out in New York on March 14, click here.