This book was published in Great Britain by Thames and Hudson in 1991 as "Egypt from the Air". I have just checked out a copy of that book from a public library and my comments relate to that edition.

Only about one-third of the book is devoted to pharaonic Egypt.

The photographs are very grainy. Many were taken in the early morning and/or late afternoon and therefore have a pinkish hue.

The text is journalistic.

Flick through a library copy before you even consider buying this book.

Save your money for a copy of Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Travel
Guide to Egypt.

This book is on the political struggle of the Malaysian Aboriginal group, or 'Orang Asli', written by a group of scholars who have been conducting research on the group since 25 years ago. But the explanation on the struggle has been constructed as simply between the politically dominant Malays and the Orang Asli minority, without explaining the critical role of the Chinese in the economic life of the Orang Asli. For such a group of excellent and experienced scholars to ignore this phenomenon is rather surprising, to say the least. What is even more surprising is the fact that it took one of the more illustrious editors, ie. Robert Dentan, 25 years after his first book on an Orang Asli group "Semai, the non-violent people", to be able to say this. It is quite obvious that they have also failed to acknowledge the fact that many Malaysian scholars have said all this a decade or so ago. There is an obvious failure on the part of the editors to productively and creatively use local sources written in the vernacular for the present book. This becomes a great handicap to the authors in constructing a more in-depth analysis. Finally, where is the voice of the suffering Orang Asli themselves? In the present post-modern theorizing exercise, dominant in anthropology (the editor is are anthropologists, except one), the absence of the real social actors' voice is unacceptable!

This book is of little value to both Mishima fans and novices. The novices will want biographical information, of which Yourcenar gives precious little - sure, all the really important stuff is there, but it's outlined in a very sketchy, couldn't-be-bothered way - and certainly far less than either John Nathan or Henry Scott-Stokes. The fans will want information that isn't available anywhere else, of which there is none whatsoever in this book. So what does Yourcenar talk about? The literature, primarily. That would be good, if not for one thing - Yourcenar is an author herself, and she seems to be out to prove her own literary worth. Thus, the book is made of torturedly "sophisticated" sentences, bizarre assertions of the nature of "those who love life love death the most" (not an exact quote, but a very accurate paraphrase), and of course, some namedropping. Yourcenar mentions D'Annunzio, Cocteau, Lautreamont, and others, with very little cause. She also knocks down a few straw men here and there (randomly, in one footnote, she spontaneously accuses nameless people of accusing Mishima of being a snob, and proceeds to prove them wrong), and once proudly proclaims that Mishima was a reader of her own literary work. Bully for her, I guess.

The literary analysis really isn't that good, either. Admittedly, a cursory read may have the effect of helping people see why they like or dislike Mishima's writing, even if Yourcenar's own musings on the matter aren't very inspiring, but it really doesn't say anything. Some of the man's works are barely given a mention - the "discussions" of After the Banquet and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea take up about a page, combined. Others are given whole chapters, but even then, there is little serious attempt at character analysis - for instance, Ying Chan, the doomed beauty of The Temple of Dawn, is described as "careless" or "thoughtless" or something to that effect, with no justification for this whatsoever, and no further attempt is made to understand her. The part dealing with The Decay of the Angel is effective, but only because it makes the reader remember that incredible novel - it is Mishima who is responsible for the effectiveness, and not Yourcenar.

So what's Yourcenar's point? Apparently, that Mishima had a special vision of a "Buddhist Void" unique to him that inscrutably exhorted him to commit suicide. That's about it. To this end, she gives probably a lot more attention than is necessary to some of Mishima's lesser, later political works - but almost none, paradoxically, to his essay Sun and Steel. This is why she glosses over biographical details - because in her opinion, they have little to no bearing on Mishima's life. A few anecdotes, such as the "green snake" incident, are related with much self-conscious weightiness, as if they held some kind of magical key to Mishima's work. All of these anecdotes are also related by either Nathan or Scott-Stokes in their respective biographies with much less sophomoric interpretations. Yourcenar continues with a rhapsodic summary of the story "Patriotism," which has no value to any reader who has read the source material, and only ends up conveying the impression that Yourcenar is far more fond of blood and death than Mishima ever was. She ends with a poetization of Mishima's last day, in which she waxes eloquent and ecstatic on the subject of ritual disembowelment and decapitation. This culminates in the last paragraph of the book, a completely unnecessary and grotesque extended metaphor that says nothing and isn't even worth reading.

When the book doesn't make goofy conclusions from its superficial collection of facts, it resorts to just praising Mishima's work. On this there is no argument from me, as I am a big fan of Mishima and agree wholeheartedly with Yourcenar's praise. However, her book contributes nothing new to the exciting field of praise, either. Truth be told, I have a hard time understanding why this book was even written. At 150 pages, it's barely even a book; it fails as a biography and as literary criticism. Even at its best, it just isn't very good; you'd do much, much better with either of the two primary Mishima biographies.

I got this book from one of my friends and now I understand why he wanted to get rid of it.
This book is very general and poorly formulated. The examples and C codes are hard to follow and very poorly explained.
So, the bottom line is, don't waste your money.