In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century.(Book review)

Historian, The, September, 2005 by Russell, Mona L.

In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. By Nelly Hanna. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 219. $19.95.)

The middle class and the printed word have generated much interest among social, political, and intellectual historians of early modern Europe. Both share a remarkable role in fashioning individualism, political dissidence, and modernity. With respect to the historiography of the Middle East generally, and Egypt specifically, discussions of these phenomena revolve around the emergence of the modern nation-state in the nineteenth century, after the penetration of Western capitalism and imperialism. True to its series' tide, Nelly Hanna's In Praise of Books challenges this trend,...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.