A review by mrlzbth
Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs by Bob Brier

2.0

I thought this book would mostly be about Ancient Egypt in pop culture, tracing how "Egyptomania" has manifested itself in different time periods to reflect people's changing interests and concerns. And the last part of the book, which talks about various movies, is close to what I expected. But the vast majority of the book is about the engineering required to move ancient obelisks from Egypt to various locations around the world. And in those sections Brier barely touches on "Egyptomania" other than to briefly list some of the varying types of merchandise that were produced after each obelisk arrived at its new home.

This just wasn't what I expected, and while portions of it were interesting, overall I felt it needed a lot more analysis to be a really great read.