Why bookshops are important, or how Detectives Beyond Borders discovered the source of the Nile

I'd never taken any but the most casual interest in ancient Egypt until I came across Alexandre Moret's classic 1926 study The Nile and Egyptian Civilization.  Thanks to Moret, I now know something about the social upheavals that led to the downfall of Egypt's Old Kingdom and about the resulting social and religious differences between the Old and the Middle Kingdoms.

I learned about the political organization of Egypt before the Pharaohs from Moret, and about how Egypt came together as a centralized polity. His book introduced me to the great boasting and the touching laments of the pyramid texts. Perhaps best of all, Moret communicates the excitement that attended Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.

And it was Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, Pa., that introduced me to Moret. I'd gone in to buy Scott Phillips' new novel, Hop Alley, flipped through Moret's book, found it a readable exciting account of a subject about which much twaddle has been written, bought it, and have found as exciting a discovery as any I'd made in some time.

Try doing that on Amazon.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014