Excellent in all respects

This book is so good that when I reached the end I went back to the beginning and listened to it again. It relates the stories of people and events you simply would not normally hear about, and they are fascinating. Anyone sailing up or down the Nile should not be without a copy. I also appreciated hearing the Arabic place-names pronounced correctly. Well done.

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Fails as either History or Travel

This book attempts to be a cross between a travel book and a history book. In my opinion it fails on both counts. As a travel book, the so-called "journey downriver" is completely missing. No journey is described -- there are brief mentions of several disconnected trips made to Egypt by the author but with no sense of cohesion. A key ingredient of any good travel book is that one has some sense of the traveller's personality or life, but this is totally lacking. As a history book, it does contain a series of well told historical excerpts, but it is impossible to make sense of them because they are disconnected and often incomplete. A geographical ordering is just not a sensible way to tell history because the historical period being described jumps about all over the place. One exception to this is the final part about Cairo, when there is a clear and interesting account of the establishment and political events associated with the city -- told (thankfully) in chronological order. But there's a lot of listening to do before you get to that (short) section. The narration is good -- no problem on that front. I listened to this book after finished the absolutely superb series of lectures on Ancient Egypt by Bob Brier (Great Courses Series -- highly recommended). This book did give some links to the modern country but I was relieved when I finally got through it.

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2 people found this helpful