Max Rodenbeck's richly textured biography combines a sweeping timescale with a keen eye for telling detail. It traces the life of Cairo from birth -- the ancient Egyptians believed Creation itself took place there -- through the heights of Medieval splendor and to the present day.

Modern Cairo is a place of stark contrasts. Skyscrapers about ancient tombs and genteel colonial mansions. Pulled between the cultural poles of Paris and Mecca, the city's population struggles under a double load as they cope with the burden of an incomparably rich past as well as the challenges of the future.

Having spent most his life in the city, Rodenbeck tells the Cairenes' story with the sympathetic understanding gained from years of wandering Cairo's backstreets, chatting in its cafes, and burrowing in its dusty libraries. "Cairo" is a cultural excavation -- fusing the excitement of travel with the stimulation of history, it is an epic, resonant work.