Cairo: The City Victorious

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Summary: Highly readable history of Cairo
Review: A must-read history of Cairo. A well written history of this interesting capital city. The writing style adopted by Mr Rodenbeck skirts the usual heaviness of history books, and he has created a highly readable book, quite sympathetic to Cairenes. The last third of the book deals with the insurmountable social and economical problems in modern Cairo, the ascendancy of a newly moneyed class, crassly disconnected from the remaining of its inhabitants, and with the city's cultural vacuum.

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Summary: Amazing journey through time and one unique city.
Review: Any attempt to re-tell the 5000 year history of Cairo, the city of the Nile and heart of Egypt is a daunting task. Rodenbeck gracefully balances the fine line of writing a boring anthology and a detailed narrative perfectly. He has left us with a book that balances the recurring myths of Egyptology and biblical times with the controversial subjects that hound modern Cairo. My one complaint with this book is its reluctance to give any critical commentary of Hosni Mubarak's 20 year reign over Egypt. The period has seen Cairo further its hegemony over Egypt with its mounting population growth, coupled by the rise and (sometimes) fall of Islamic fused politics and the strain to recreate itself as a tourist mecca. Yet Rodenbeck avoids a critical commentary. Nevertheless, the book is a great introduction to this magical city, one sure to leave its visiotrs doubly loving and hating its size, diversity, possibilites and history.

Rating:
Summary: "His-Story" of Cairo
Review: Fantastic Portrayal of Cairo, history and present. Intelligently written with tremendous insight of Egyptian psyche and language. Fascinating account of history focusing on social history, traditions, habits and customs. With Egypt's long history, the social history often takes back seat to major events, battles, temples and achievements.

A huge amount of serious research and very savvy analysis of trends produced an excellent work that flows easily like reading an article on the pages of good newspapers yet has the backing of tremendous research of history.

Sadly, however, there is an over reliance on work and analysis of discredited Orientalists, but the author's clear love and understanding for Cairo has saved the work from being colored by the arrogance of the racist historians he relied heavily on.

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Summary: Cairo, warts and all.
Review: Few people can know Cairo as well as Max Rodenbeck, and certainly none of them writes better. Rodenbeck is incapable of penning an inelegant phrase, and his deep affection for and immense knowledge of this utterly exasperating and utterly fascinating city is apparent on every page. He's a natural storyteller with a delicious sense of humour who has many wonderful stories to tell. As a one time Cairo resident I found his book totally absorbing. I wish it had been twice as long. My book of the year. Spellbinding.

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Summary: The City on the River
Review: Having visited Cairo many times over the years and having gotten to know it a very little I was suspect of any attempt - especially by an American - to do the imensity of that vast pile justice.

And I was wrong. Gloriously wrong. Rodenbeck writes not only with facility but with depth. There is not a dull page. You will be entertained and you will be educated.

After reading it I rushed off to Amazon to buy books of that greatest of all historians Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun at Rodenbeck's 'suggestion'

It will take your breath away and give it back with the tang of what may well be the world's greatest city.

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Summary: Entertaining History of this Great City
Review: I don't think that I could add too much more to the previous excellent reviews of this book but I will try. Having visited this City some years back this book brought back snapshot memories of the street kids begging and selling all sorts of things each time you stopped. The crushing crowds at the Museum and the amount of traffic and the noise and smell of a truly vibrant city. The book made me realise how much I did not see and understand. The author, Max Rodenbeck, tells a remarkable and fascinating story of this cities history, how and why it has become what it is now. The author flicks back and forth from the earliest days to modern Cairo but you never get lost in the story, the narrative just drags you along happily. This is a great book, full of interesting pieces of information and a great way to see Cairo without actually leaving your reading chair! I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to visit Cairo or who already has. Highly recommended reading.

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Summary: An extraordinary masterpiece
Review: I have been in Cairo twice for business purpose in the past. I purchased this book in London UK sometime early 2000 and I spent all my new year night to read the book. It is the book I wanted not to be finishedso soon. I believe and I hope that I will visit Cairo in the year 2001 with my wife to see the city and the nearby sites, and I do hope to make business in order to repeat my visits to Cairo in the years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive
Review: It's hard to imagine a book about an ancient city that would be hard to put down. This one fulfilled all my fantasies. The author quickly brought me up to speed on the city's past and then gave a wide-angle shot of the present. Now I want to go there.

Rating:
Summary: Cairo: The City Victorious.
Review: Rodenbeck, a journalist for The Economist, has written a superior paean, one that mixes the intensity of first-hand experience with the fruits of a thorough immersion into the written record. The result is both jaunty and learned, a pleasing whole that will interest those who wish to imagine that exotic locale as well as those who have personally experienced the city and wish better to understand its rhythms. Few cities can inspire as interesting a book as Cairo: The City Victorious and few writers can carry it off as well as Rodenbeck.

Size and crowdedness tend to make Cairo less than a favorite for travelers - more a place to bear and get through than to enjoy. But if one can endure the noise, dirt, and traffic, there is much to discover. The city contains antiquities from an amazingly diverse collection of eras; only Rome can try to compete with Cairo's monuments that span the five thousand years from the great pyramids of Giza to the present. Rodenbeck breezes through ancient times and settles on the medieval era, then traces its decline during the dismal period 1500-1800. His account comes most to life in the late nineteenth century, when Cairo revived in the guise of a partially European city (in 1910, he reckons, one-eighth of the city was foreign-born) -- a heady, exciting place for the Europeanized elite.

"The first half of Cairo's twentieth century saw the West overwhelm the East. High heels and two-tones clattered up marble stairs; camelskin babouches rustled down. The century's second half saw the reverse: silken slippers shuffling down, bare peasant feet and army boots stomping up." After the coup of 1952 that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power, Cairo then suffered, as did the whole country, under Nasser's tyranny and the cost of his foreign adventures. Even Rodenbeck's infectious narrative takes a somber turn, weighed down by totalitarian rule at home and military disaster abroad. Fortunately, things improved with Nasser's death in 1970 and the lighter rule of Sadat and Mubarak that followed, though our author finds much not to like in the present-day city. Fanatical Islamic sheikhs who would ban zucchini because of its suggestive shape are one sort of problem; the inevitable proliferation of McDonald's are another. Still, he counts on the city's "shambolic grandeur and operatic despair" to continue, on its "enduring, life-giving nonchalance" to sustain it beyond jihad or hamburgers.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1999

Rating:
Summary: "His-Story" of Cairo
Review: This book was a fun and quick read. I would have probably given it 2.5-3 stars had it not been for the overrated reviews already given the book and the fact that this book was published by a university press. I expected much more.

I found that while entertaining, the book was far from thorough and that it strayed every now and again into an occasional irresponsible comment - something one shouldn't expect from a university publication. In addition there was a heavy elitist bias.

Much of this book seems to be based on stray documents that have been cobbled together to form an extremely generalized and probably misleading portrait of Cairo throughout its multi-layered, several thousand year history (how does one cover the thousands of years of history of cairo in 350 pages?). The author's analysis of modern events also seemed somewhat schizophrenic and reflect his bias as a journalist for "The Economist".

Finally I think that this book about Cairo was written from the perspective of an outsider that seems to value the structures and institutions of Cairo beyond the welfare of the common people of Cairo. If given the opportunity to debate, many in Cairo would at least object to his analysis of the post-revolution period and beyond.