A Beirut Anthology Reviews

Cairo is an exploding modern metropolis of eighteen million people that nevertheless preserves within its heart the finest medieval city in the world, its alleys, mosques, and caravanserais the original setting for the Arabian Nights, whose atmosphere is palpable still for the visitor wandering through its bazaars, while at sunset the Pyramids glow gold against the Western Desert as they have done for one million seven hundred thousand evenings past. The monuments of pharaohs and sultans lie within the city’s reach, making Cairo and its environs an unequaled storehouse of human achievement. In this guide to the largest city in Africa and the political and cultural fulcrum of the Arab world, Michael Haag explores Cairo’s past and present in word and picture, from Saqqara to the Citadel of Saladin, from the ancient synagogue and churches of Old Cairo to the skyscrapers along the Nile, from Khan al-Khalili, the vast bazaar as intricate as inlay work, to the Belle Epoque façades of the downtown streets, and introduces you to the treasures of three great civilizations at the Islamic, Coptic, and Egyptian Antiquities museums. Beautifully illustrated with 150 color photographs, this is a fascinating armchair tour of Cairo in all its variety.

Photographed from the sky, Egypt shows the best of itself. The course of the Nile, which cuts the desert in two from north to south, and the enormous Delta provide glorious, lush vegetation sliced by a deep blue band. The white sails that slide over its waters and the spectacular monuments that line its banks, the human ants’ nest of Cairo, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, palm groves and fertile fields, rocky mountains, coral seas, and the ever-changing waves of the dunes in the desert: all of Egypt’s magical panoramas and incomparable light are offered here in this series of five spectacular new books, together constituting the greatest collection of aerial views of the country ever made.