I’m interested in reading about the history of Egypt and what was there before the pharohs and pyramids, etc as well as the pyramids and everything we’ve learned in school.
Can anyone recommend a good book on this subject? I checked out Amazon and there’s so many I’m not sure what is a highly recommended one .
There are a fair number of books in the ancient Egypt section of the AskHistorians reading list, so start there if you don't have specific research interests. I particularly recommend Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs and Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Mertz as general overviews of ancient Egypt.
If you can find a copy, Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs by Matthias Seidel and Regine Schulz is a very good introduction to ancient Egypt. It combines a good number of illustrations and color photographs with brief but thorough essays on Egyptian history and archaeology. I uploaded a sample snippet here.