P. J. Vatikiotis (1928–1997)

The author’s writing style is very good and easy to understand. However, for a book which was so expensive, i expected more. I can’t understand why the author didn’t choose to write a more complete biography on Metaxas. He could have explained better the political climate in Greece as well as the state of international affairs. He could have provided backgrounds on the people that Metaxas interacted with. There are so many things that the author could have done to provide a fuller and richer story of Metaxas’ life (so as to make the reader feel that his money is well spent)rather than simply hiding behind the excuse that what he intended was merely a prosopography and not a biography. Simply put, for its price, the book is too short and incomplete considering the fact there are so many things to write about Metaxas and the historical events that he lived in.… (mais)

I read this book since it was mentioned as a reference by many authors. It is not bad at all, but I'd like to mention a few (negative) issues.

[1] It is covering all major events, at least briefly (e.g. the Egyptian-Syrian union is only mentioned as a matter of fact in a very short paragraph). However, the coverage of events differ between what happened post-Nasser (or thereabout) and events before. The author gives the impression of being far more passionate about what happened during the reign of Muhammad Ali and Ismail, than what happened during the Free Officer era and onwards (especially post-Nasser). To put it in another way; I'm generally a lot more interested in 20th century history, but I found myself enjoying reading about Egypt in the 19th century a lot more than I enjoyed the later bits.

[2] The book ends with a chapter labelled "Education and culture", which basically covers development of education, literature etc. But, why not a chapter about, say, science and technology as well? Why would one write more about the development of Egyptian poetry than on Egypt's wars with Israel and union with Syria, put together? It really makes no sense. I can only assume that the author is very interested in the topic.

[3] The book has been updated badly. The Sadat era is described in a rather detached and non-analytical way, but worse is to come. Once Mubarak enter the stage one is given the impression every two pages or so, that the book is coming to an end, as the author seems to be tying everything together and is preparing his final words...

[4] This was the 4th edition, yet there were half a dozen or so easily spotted typos in there. Sloppy.… (mais)