April 2022 – Bensenville Community Public Library

Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Can’t make it downtown to catch the Art Institute of Chicago’s current exhibit: Life and Afterlife in Ancient Egypt? Check out your Bensenville Library’s beautifully illustrated tomes on the Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt!

About the exhibit: Experience over 3,000 years of arts from ancient Egypt in a dynamic new gallery. The transformed space explores aspects of life and the afterlife in the Nile Valley with the first new installation of works from the museum’s historic collection of ancient Egyptian art in a quarter-century. Striking artifacts—displayed along one wall of the gallery in a series of innovative cases that promote viewing from multiple vantage points—provide insight into the beliefs and practices of this illustrious North African culture.

Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples of the Land of the Pharaohs

by Lorna Oakes

This beautiful volume is a fascinating guide to the myths, religions, pyramids, temples, and more that make up the allure of ancient Egypt. Readers will gain a unique understanding of this captivating culture through breathtaking, full-color illustrations, in-depth text, detailed maps, and comprehensive chronologies.

The Art of Ancient Egypt

by Gay Robins

From the awesome grandeur of the Great Pyramids to the delicacy of a face etched on an amulet, the spellbinding power of ancient Egyptian art persists to this day. Spanning three thousand years, this beautifully illustrated history offers a thorough and delightfully readable introduction to the artwork.

The Pharaohs: Master-Builders

by Henri Stierlin

This is a popular account of Egyptian architecture which discusses building techniques and technologies before examining the great monuments of Egypt in roughly chronological succession, ending with the temples at Philae. Very attractively illustrated in colour, this remains a serious book which juxtaposes glossy (and some unusual) photos with temple plans and other pictorial sources for reconstructing the architects and builders lives.

Tutankhamun: the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs

by Zahi Hawass

Mysterious boy king Tutankhamun returns to the U.S. in 2008, bringing rare treasures never before seen outside Egypt. For the millions of fans wanting a keepsake and chronicle of this magnificent new exhibition, this book will delight. Created by world-renowned art historians under the guidance of Zahi Hawass–director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and a well-known media personality–it surveys 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history by focusing on the lives and lifestyles of great pharaohs.

The Golden King: the World of Tutankhamun

by Zahi Hawass

These books make palpable the excitement, beauty, riches, and mysteries of ancient Egypt. Zahi Hawass brings these fabled figures and their tumultuous, astonishing age to life, with an authoritative text highlighted by scores of stunning photographs, including archival images from the first great era of Egyptian archaeology, when Carter and other Westerners reawakened the world to the golden glory of the ancient civilization explored in this dazzling book.

Want more recommendations?

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

If You Liked… Ken Burns’ Benjamin Franklin

By bcplweb Booklists, Booklists, If You Liked...

Ken Burns’s two-part, four-hour documentary, Benjamin Franklin, explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential and compelling personalities, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States. Franklin’s 84 years (1706-1790) spanned an epoch of momentous change in science, technology, literature, politics, and government — fields he himself advanced through a lifelong commitment to societal and self-improvement.

All of the titles featured here in this booklist are available in our catalog. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us… the one who seems made of flesh and blood rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America’s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders.

Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity

by Nick Bunker

From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always been ab embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through an often harsh, colonial world where he fought many battles with his rivals, and also with his own wayward emotions in trying to balance virtue against ambition. This volume chronicles that story.

Writings

by Benjamin Franklin

One of 17 children, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He ended his formal education at the age of 10 and began working as an apprentice at a newspaper. Running away to Philadelphia at 17, he worked for a printer, later opening his own print shop. As a man of many talents and interests, as a writer, publisher, scientist, inventor, diplomat and politician he authored many works during his 84 years that are collected in this volume.

Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings

by Benjamin Franklin

This Library of America collection of Franklin’s works begins with letters sent from London describing events and diplomacy preceding the Revolutionary War, political satires, bagatelles, pamphlets, and letters written in Paris where he represented the revolutionary United States at the court of Louis XVI, as well as his speeches given in the Constitutional Convention… including his last published article, a searing satire against slavery. Also included are his shrewd prefaces to Poor Richard’s Almanack with their worldly, pungent maxims and finally, the classic Autobiography, Franklin’s last word on his greatest literary creation–his own invented personality—completely faithful to Franklin’s own manuscript.