A recent trip to the Met in NYC reacquainted, and then got me fascinated with this pharaoh, particularly the Aten cult he helped establish. Does anyone know any good, readable histories or scholarly biographies of this guy's life and times? I'm especially interested in how he overhauled, or failed to overhaul Egyptian polytheism. Anyone know a good non-fiction (no historical fiction please!) account to start with?
Here are two books by well-regarded and experienced Egyptologists:
Hornung, E. (2001). Akhenaten and the religion of light. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Montserrat, D. (2000). Akhenaten: History, fantasy, and ancient Egypt. London: Routledge.
I can't say I can vouch for the readability of these texts, as I'm not sure what you consider to be readable. But from a scholarly standpoint, these sources will be very good.
There is actually a wonderful list on /r/AskHistorians of books.
Here you go:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast#wiki_ancient_egypt
I don't know to what extent the list deals with Akhenaten, but I assume it is a decent amount (seeing as he is one of the more famous Egyptian pharaohs).