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The Nile
The Nile is the longest river in the world. In its route from the Lake Plateau of East Africa to the Mediterranean, the Nile flows for more than four thousand miles through nine Tanzania, Kenya, Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Sudan, and Egypt. The river begins in volcanoes and mountains with glacial snows and ends in arid deserts.
Throughout history, the banks of the Nile have been home to many peoples, from Bantu cultivators, Nilotic herdsmen, and Ethiopians in their highlands to the Sudanese, Nubians, and Egyptians on the plains below. No other river in the world has embraced such human diversity. But the huge and varied populations that have thrived on the waters of the Nile have also exerted extraordinary pressures on the river and its environment. From the early canals dug by the pharaohs to the building of the Aswan High Dam in 1971, civilizations have struggled to tame the Nile and control its resources. In The Nile , Robert Collins charts this dynamic interplay between man and nature in chronicling the past, present, and future of this great river.
Throughout history, the banks of the Nile have been home to many peoples, from Bantu cultivators, Nilotic herdsmen, and Ethiopians in their highlands to the Sudanese, Nubians, and Egyptians on the plains below. No other river in the world has embraced such human diversity. But the huge and varied populations that have thrived on the waters of the Nile have also exerted extraordinary pressures on the river and its environment. From the early canals dug by the pharaohs to the building of the Aswan High Dam in 1971, civilizations have struggled to tame the Nile and control its resources. In The Nile , Robert Collins charts this dynamic interplay between man and nature in chronicling the past, present, and future of this great river.
- GenresGeography
260 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 2002
49 people want to read
About the author
Robert O. Collins
46 books17 followersA specialist in the history of East Africa and Sudan, Robert O. Collins was Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught from 1965 to 1994.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 30, 2017
I enjoyed this book because I knew little about the Nile - its hydrology, its geography and its people. It has to be the most complex river in the world. The book was a great source of information. Perhaps, it was not real well organized and may not have been written all that well. Sometimes hard to follow with multiple names for the same thing (dams, falls, rivers, etc). The maps were somewhat helpful but could have been better. All-in-all, a excellent preparation for our upcoming trip to Egypt and the Nile river and Lake Nasser.
March 4, 2010
Author Dan Morrison has chosen to discuss Robert O Collins’s
The Nile
on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject – The Nile, saying that:
“…It is almost a biography of the Nile – from its farthest headwaters to the Mediterranean. Throughout the book Collins provides pieces of human and geological history and the stories of the engineers and technocrats who tried for 200 years to exploit it…”
The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/dan-morrison
“…It is almost a biography of the Nile – from its farthest headwaters to the Mediterranean. Throughout the book Collins provides pieces of human and geological history and the stories of the engineers and technocrats who tried for 200 years to exploit it…”
The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/dan-morrison
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews