Alexandria: The City that Changed the World by Islam IssaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Islam Issa presents a definitive, comprehensive, digestible, and all around fascinating history of one of the world’s greatest cities of all time. Delving into every era in detail - ancient precursors, Ptolemaic Greek, early Christian, caliphate conquest, Napoleonic, all the way to the modern Egypt Issa knows well - it still manages to teach me much I hadn’t known before. Like how Alexander himself never saw this city built in his honor, or how Egyptian figs are actually the fruit of a sycamore tree. But as a cosmopolitan center of world culture and politics back in the day, it’s the model city to which all others today must strive to follow, if they are to leave nearly as much of a mark even when their time appears to have come and gone.
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