Nighttime is the best time for stories. And Lulu is the best storyteller. She knows about the three cross-eyed dogs at a fancy restaurant, about blue and green mountains where fish fly, about the family party where Maishel Shmelkin forgot to wear his pants and of course about the noodle woman the pointy red nose. The stories, told by a sister to her little brother, are short and sweet and make you remember things and forget things. Maira Kalman paints a wondrous and humor-filled world in a childs-eye view. It is full of wild invention, people familar and outlandish, bittersweet moments and flights of fancy.

Book Excerpt: ...onument that the famed tomb of Perneb was found--more than four hundred miles north of the Theban rock valley where Tut-Ankh-Amen sleeps. Again I was forced to silence through sheer awe. The prospect of such antiquity, and the secrets each hoary monument seemed to hold and brood over, filled me with a reverence and sense of immensity nothing else ever gave me.Fatigued by our climb, and disgusted with the importunate Bedouins whose actions seemed to defy every rule of taste, we omitted the arduous detail of entering the cramped interior passages of any of the pyramids, though we saw several of the hardiest tourists preparing for the suffocating crawl through Cheops' mightiest memorial. As we dismissed and overpaid our local bodyguard and drove back to Cairo with Abdul Reis under the afternoon sun, we half regretted the omission we had made. Such fascinating things were whispered about lower pyramid passages not in the guide books; passages whose entrances had been hastily blocked up and concealed by ce...

This gentle mystery teaches so much about Ancient Egyptian culture, but in a way that is appropriate for children in grades 1¿3.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

The most remarkable piece of ground in the World as Flinders Petrie described the Giza Plateau. Here the Pyramid Complexes of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure have stood for 4,600 years. The Giza pyramids have been scientifically studied for the last 300 years; now for the first time all three are brought together in one book. Virtually all contemporary "pyramid" books address only Khufu's Great Pyramid. This book provides a complete detailed look at all three Giza pyramids and their complexes: the Sphinx, subsidiary pyramids, temples, boat pits, and enclosures. The descriptions are supplemented by almost 300 photos and drawings to provide the reader a detail look which can only be surpassed by being there in person with a very knowledgeable guide. But it is not just descriptions as the complexes are today, but how the early explorers entered the pyramids and what they found. In addition Charles Rigano provides new ideas on: * How Khufu was interred in his Great Pyramid. * How the first robbers gained entry and robbed Khufu's pyramid. * How Caliph Al Mamun in 820AD really penetrated the Great Pyramid. * Why Heterpheres "tomb" is at Giza. * Why there is a field of stone bases near Khafre's Pyramid. * The initial smaller plan for Khafre's Pyramid. * Conclusive evidence that ties the Sphinx to Khafre. * How Menkaure's Burial Chamber and Inclined Passage were built. In this book Charles Rigano combines both his on-site examinations and study of more than 200 references from the early explorers to the recent Egyptologists to form a complete picture of the Pyramid Complexes. This material is available nowhere else in a single volume.

The Great Pyramids of Egypt--all kids over the age of five recognize them instantly. These massive tombs were built thousands of years ago, and still no one knows exactly how the ancient Egyptians did it! In this informative account, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler tell the story of the powerful pharaohs who commissioned the pyramids at Giza and offer a fascinating look at the culture of the afterlife in ancient Egypt, explaining exactly how mummies were made. Easy to read and scrupulously researched, this explores the mysteries that have attracted countless visitors to the pyramids for centuries.

The Egyptologist acclaimed for re-dating the Great Sphinx at Giza sets his sights on one of the true mysteries of antiquity: the Great Pyramid of Giza. What is the Great Pyramid of Giza? Ask that basic question of a traditional Egyptologist, and you get the basic, traditional answer: a fancy tombstone for a self-important pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. This, Egyptologists argue, is the sole finding based on the data, and the only deduction supported by science. By implication, anyone who dissents from this point of view is unscientific and woolly-minded-a believer in magic and ghosts. Indeed, some of the unconventional ideas about the Great Pyramid do have a spectacularly fabulous ring to them. Yet from beneath the obvious terms of this controversy, a deeper, more significant question arises: how is it that the Great Pyramid exercises such a gripping hold on the human psyche- adding cryptic grace to the back of the one-dollar bill and framing myriad claims of New Age "pyramid power"? In Pyramid Quest, Robert M. Schoch and Robert Aquinas McNally use the rigorous intellectual analysis of scientific inquiry to investigate what we know about the Great Pyramid, and develop a stunning hypothesis: This ancient monument is the strongest proof yet that civilization began thousands of years earlier than is generally thought, extending far back into a little-known time. In tracing that story, we come to understand not only the Great Pyramid but also our own origins as civilized beings.

Tents and Pyramids deals with an unusual and absorbing topic: how the Arabs see and deal with reality and the implications this has for the nature of power in the Arab world. 'Tents' and 'pyramids' are, metaphorically opposed mental images; the first signifies the absence of hierarchy and graded authority, the second the presence of both. Khuri argues that the Arabs perceive both social and physical reality as a series of discrete, non-pyramidal structures that are inherently equal in value much like a bedouin encampment composed of tents scattered haphazardly on a flat desert surface with no visible hierarchy. Authority is not built into a hierarchical arrangement where the roles are subordinated to one another in a graded system (as in the West); it is, rather, derived from the use of sheer physical power, with one person dominating the others-a first among 'equals'. Strategy, manoeuvrability and tactics take precedence over office and structure. The strategy is to act in groups; the isolated are vulnerable. There are striking parallels between these mental constructs and the behavioural patterns in Arab society, in situations ranging from backgammon to autocratic rule. The book examines the mechanisms involved in sports and card games, poetry and prose, charting genealogies and laws of inheritance, etc. Since there are no 'pyramids', there are no standardised rules of succession to high office. Government belongs to the powerful, the conquerors. And power rests in the control of solidarities, or endogamous groups, which militates against the rise of a 'public' that holds the ruler accountable for his actions. There is no public and therefore no republic. Whether'president', 'king', 'sultan', 'imam' or 'emir', the governor always rules autocratically.