I remember the moment in 1970 when my fascination with Ancient Egypt started. At work, someone left a book about the Great Pyramid sitting on a desk. I casually picked it up and leafed through the pages...and was immediately absorbed by the subject. That moment led to a lifetime of study and fascination with Egyptology. My interest focused from the full 3,000 year Ancient Egyptian history to architecture during the 500 year long Old Kingdom; the time when a newly unified Egypt made its first mark on history and a time the full resources of an ancient country were harnessed to build the enormous mortuary complexes, the pyramids and the Sphinx. In my reading I was frustrated by the lack of detail and photographs in generally available books. After much research and a number of trips to Egypt, I felt the need – it was not just a thought or a desire or a feeling, but a real need - to write about Ancient Egypt and the Old Kingdom. I started this book to provide the detail which had been missing. Through my trips and research I developed proposals about subjects which were outside the book’s scope and wrote articles on: the Bent Pyramid interior, Sneferu’s pyramid at Meidum, the small subsidiary pyramid uncovered near Khufu’s Pyramid, and two articles on pyramid building, all of which provided new ideas on these subjects. My ideas and proposals were in keeping with conventional Egyptological thinking. Through my on-site study of the ancient sites, the writings of ancient travelers, what early scientists found when they removed the sand and re-discovered the old monuments, when explorers entered the pyramids to study and not to plunder, and the works of modern Egyptologists, I developed new insights on the old monuments. Many contemporary authors focus only on the Great Pyramid and consider what might be possible. I focus on the archaeological record to see where it leads me. In my new book, "The Pyramids of the Giza Plateau" I form the first complete “picture” of the ancient Giza monuments of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.