Description
British journalist Stewart (d. 1981) lived and worked for many years in Cairo and traces her history through 55 centuries. Beginning with Memphis, the first capital of ancient Egypt, he describes high and low points, heroic leaders and cowardly tyrants, time as a provincial outpost and imperial capital, and manifestation in his own time. His account was first published as Cairo 5500 Years by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1968, and again by the current publisher in 1981. Distributed in the US by Columbia U. Press. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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Acutely observed and enthralling history of one of the world's great cities is once more available in a new edition. Desmond Stewart begins with Memphis, the first capital of ancient Egypt, then takes the reader through fifty-five hectic centuries of urban life and varying fortunes to today's teeming Cairo. Employing a keen understanding of human nature, Stewart surveys the vicissitudes of the city, and makes sense of its highlights and lowlights, its times of glory and its times of misery, its heroic leaders and its cowardly tyrants. Sometimes a provincial outpost, sometimes an imperial capital, plunging from pinnacles of wealth, patronage, and achievement to sloughs of famine and cannibalism and rising again, Cairo - whose name means 'the Triumphant' - has changed and survived, and remains an astonishing and remarkable city.
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