Having taught modern and contemporary history at Princeton University in the US for close to 50 years and having made many trips to Egypt, Tignor is the closest you can get to a definitive source on the subject. More importantly, he is one of the more accessible sources out there.

In one word, the book is ‘readable,’ neatly packaging 5,000 years and a great deal of the significant characters of Egyptian history into one telling account. It steers clear of the dry academic history book style and engages the reader. Robotic recitation of facts and dates are absent in this book: yes, there are the narratives of the pharaohs, symbolic sites and gods — but the book’s real forte is in the way the eras seamlessly bound from one chapter to the next. 

Tignor devotes certain chapters to the men that formed and shaped Egypt who simply cannot be overlooked — demigods like Ramses II who ruled for an incredible 66 years. One excerpt transports the reader back to 1274 BC, at the Battle of Kadesh, when the Hittites fought the forces of one of the titans of history. 

“Just as the Egyptian force was on the verge of being routed, Ramses II rallied his soldiers single-handedly, plunging headlong with his chariot into the midst of his adversaries at enormous risk to himself. His bold actions snatched military victory from what appeared certain defeat.”

The magnitude of the mighty pharaoh’s prolonged greatness certainly needs to be taken into perspective when looking at a kingdom that dates back several millennia. Tignor cleverly adds the footnote that it is a war’s victors that write the histories, and certainly Ramses II did the same, having several accounts of ‘his’ exploits made widely known. 

Another chapter is devoted to Napoleon Bonaparte, Mohamed Ali Pasha and Khedive Ismail, and the lasting influences they had on modern Egypt. The larger-than-life Napoleon was to stay only three years, in part because of a Cairo revolt as well as a failed French campaign into Syria. In contrast, Mohamed Ali Pasha ruled Egypt for 43 years, from 1805 to 1848, and Tignor notes that he “set in motion modernizing programs that transformed nearly all corners of Egyptian society. […]” Higher learning, advancing society, buttressing the economy and strengthening the army all took precedence in Ali’s modern-day Egypt.

It was Ali’s Paris-educated grandson Ismail who pushed Egypt to emulate Europe. The results can be seen in downtown Cairo. “The center of the new Cairo was the plaza that is known today as Talaat Harb Square and from which impressive boulevards were constructed outwards in all directions like the spokes of a wheel,” Tignor writes. “Nearby Talaat Harb plaza, city planners built the grand opera house and the national theater, all underlining the reality that Cairo had indeed become “Paris along the Nile.”

Because the book was published in September 2010, the author has now released a 2011 edition with a new afterword. bt