Winged Bull: The Extraordinary Life of Henry Layard, the Adventurer Who Discovered the Lost City of Nineveh

In the summer of 1839, Henry Layard—just twenty-two years old—left England for eastern Europe and distant lands of the Ottoman Empire. He had never set foot in these regions before and wasn’t fluent in their languages. But he would experience one dramatic adventure after another, narrowly escaping death, combatting murderous thieves, riding with Bakhtiari warriors in Persia, and going on secret missions for the British embassy in Turkey.

Layard made some of the most important archaeology di...