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ALEXANDRIA

Name: ALEXANDRIA
Author: Islam Issa
ISBN: 9781639365456

THE CITY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

by Islam Issa ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2024

A well-researched, readable history of one of the world’s oldest and most consequential cities.

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A comprehensive history of a city that has served as a “representative illustration of some of history’s most consequential empires.”

An Alexandrian by birth, Issa, a curator, broadcaster, and professor of literature and history, relates his native city’s past principally through attention to its most famous figures and rulers. Alexandria may carry the name of an extraordinary world-historical military genius, but many other celebrated figures—Homer’s Helen of Troy and Paris, Aristotle (Alexander’s teacher), Cleopatra and Antony, and the Ptolemy dynasty—have been associated with it over the centuries. Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt’s founding strongman, was born there; writers C.P. Cavafy, Anatole France, and Lawrence Durrell evoked it in their work; and composers like Sayed Darwish, known as “the father of Egyptian music,” called it home. Alexandria’s famous library housed the world’s first great collection of knowledge, and its lighthouse was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. As a Mediterranean seaport on the western edge of the Nile Delta, Alexandria’s grain trade sustained other significant cities like Athens, Rome, and Carthage. As Issa emphasizes in his brisk tale, the city’s founders successfully “gambled on two outrageous hypotheses: that gathering a diverse set of people to live and work together would make the strategically located spot a world trading centre; and that collecting and generating knowledge would render it a global power.” Thus, from its earliest days, Alexandria, whose history embodies most of the history of Mediterranean civilization, prefigured later, modern communities in its diverse, polyglot population of pagans, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It remained vital even as it fell to successive conquests by Rome, Arab dynasties, the Ottomans, French, and British, before Egypt gained its independence in 1953 and Alexandria became the Arab city it is now.

A well-researched, readable history of one of the world’s oldest and most consequential cities.

Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024

ISBN: 9781639365456

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023

Categories:

HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL NONFICTION

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ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE

by Kristen Kish ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 2025

Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.

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The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.

For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”

Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.

Pub Date: April 22, 2025

ISBN: 9780316580915

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

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A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.