The New York Times – Dale B. Martin
A real strength of the book is that it provides an introduction to first-century Palestine, including economics, politics and religion. Mr. Aslan uses previous scholarship to describe the precarious existence of Jewish peasants and the lower classes, and how the Romans and the Jewish upper class exploited the land and the people…Zealot shares some of the best traits of popular writing on scholarly subjects: it moves at a good pace; it explains complicated issues as simply as possible; it even provides notes for checking its claims…[Aslan] is a good writer. Zealot is…an entertaining read. It is also a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.