The authors also paint an incomplete picture of the city's literary culture and its museum, which functioned like a modern university. These criticisms aside, most readers, especially those interested in the history of science, will find this a nourishing account. From the city's founding by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE through its Islamic conquest in 646 CE, Pollard and Reid track Alexandria's status as a center of Hellenism in the ancient mediterranean world. Mysteries such as the fate of Alexandria's famous library are left as that, while the works and authors it certainly housed furnish the authors' basic source material. Both authors have produced many history documentaries, and they write accessibly, not stuffily, as they discuss why Alexandrians such as Euclid and Eratosthenes are stars in the history of science. Parallel to these stories of scholars, among them the pioneer of librarianship, the cataloger Callimachus, the authors recount the fortunes of the Ptolemaic dynasty that expired with Cleopatra. Through it all stood the Pharos lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders, from which one could have observed the Roman takeover and the growth of
The authors also paint an incomplete picture of the city's literary culture and its museum, which functioned like a modern university. These criticisms aside, most readers, especially those interested in the history of science, will find this a nourishing account. From the city's founding by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE through its Islamic conquest in 646 CE, Pollard and Reid track Alexandria's status as a center of Hellenism in the ancient mediterranean world. Mysteries such as the fate of Alexandria's famous library are left as that, while the works and authors it certainly housed furnish the authors' basic source material. Both authors have produced many history documentaries, and they write accessibly, not stuffily, as they discuss why Alexandrians such as Euclid and Eratosthenes are stars in the history of science. Parallel to these stories of scholars, among them the pioneer of librarianship, the cataloger Callimachus, the authors recount the fortunes of the Ptolemaic dynasty that expired with Cleopatra. Through it all stood the Pharos lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders, from which one could have observed the Roman takeover and the growth of