Wednesday book

I just finished reading Toby Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The only time I ever had any formal exposure to ancient Egyptian history was back in World History class in high school, and naturally that was very sketchy. Granted I picked up a few disconnected names from Nova episodes on TV and National Geographic magazines, but I had very little idea of the general outlines of Egyptian history. The book covers about 3000 years, from the unification of upper and lower Egypt to the death of Cleopatra, and I suspect that in some cases little more is known about some of the individual kings and pharaohs than this book passes along. It is written in a readable style, though I admit when plowing through hundreds of years of minor rulers that few non-Egyptologists ever hear of, it does get a little hard to concentrate. But overall I think it's a good place to learn the fundamentals of the story of a very interesting civilization, why it prospered for long periods and why it fell apart more than once.