A Potentially Strong Overview, But Riddled With Weaknesses - A Review of The Story of Egypt

The Story of Egypt: The Civilization that Shaped the World by Joann Fletcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I’ve been fascinated with ancient Egypt since I was in grade school. I attribute this fascination to my mother, who gave me a lovely set of lavishly-illustrated Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness books when I was younger, and those books informed my current, adult fascination in history and science, as well as nudged me towards the kind of reading I most enjoy doing today. My mother would help me amass quite the collection of such books as I was growing up, but among the very first books she gave me was about ancient Egypt. Since then, I have been enamoured with the place and the time period, and once dreamed of becoming an Egyptologist, digging through the shifting sands in search of lost Egyptian artefacts.

Because of this early interest in the subject, I’ve tried to keep up with whatever new books about ancient Egypt come out - something that was difficult before, but now made significantly easier thanks to the Internet. It has also become much easier to find books about specific parts of ancient Egyptian history, or about specific personages; oftentimes, I skim the Kirkus Review’s website for new books that might interest me. That was how I found out about The Woman Who Would Be King, Kara Cooney’s biography of Hatshepsut, which turned out to be one of my favourite reads of 2015, despite a few minor issues I had with it, which I mention in this review.

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