Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places Arabia written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Escape from Riyadh - William Gifford Palgrave A scholar and a solider, a Jesuit and a Jew, a French spy and a British ambassador- Palgrave was a man of contradictions, all of them highly compromised when in 1862-3, fortified by Pius IX's blessing and Napoleon III's cash, he attempted the first west- east crossing of the Arabian peninsular. To steely nerves and a genius for disguise he owed his eventual success; but not before both were sorely tested when, as a Syrian doctor, he became the first European to enter Riyadh. The desert capital of the fanatical Wahabis, dangerous for an infidel at the best of times, was then doubly so as the sons of the ageing King Feisal intrigued for power. Desert Days - Charles Montagu Doughty During two years (1875-7) wandering in Central Arabia Doughty broke little new ground; dependant on desert charity, his achievement was simply to have survived. Yet his book, Arabia Deserta, was instantly recognized as a classic. Its eccentric prose proves well suited to that minute observation and experience of Bedouin life which was Doughty's main contribution to exploration. T.E. Lawrence called it "a bible of a kind"; both syntax and subject matter have biblical resonances, as in this description of a day's march, or rahla.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places Central and South Asia written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alarms amongst the Uzbeks - Alexander Burnes Of all the "forbidden" cities (Timbuktu, Mecca, Lhasa, Riyadh and so on) none enjoyed a more fearsome reputation that Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The first British Indian expedition, that of William Moorcroft in 1819-26, had never returned. Moorcroft's disappearance, like that of Livingstone or Franklin, posed a challenge in itself and preyed on the minds of his immediate successors. Heavily disguised and in an atmosphere of intense intrigue, Burnes and Dr James Gerard crossed the Afghan Hindu Kush in 1832 and approached the scenes of Moorcroft's discomfiture. They would both return; and "Bukhara Burnes" would become the most renowned explorer of his day. On the Roof of the World - John Wood In 1937 Alexander Burnes returned to Afghanistan on an official mission. Amongst his subordinates was a ship's lieutenant who, having surveyed the navigational potential of the river Indus, took off on a mid-winter excursion into the unknown Pamirs between China and Turkestan. Improbably, therefore, it was John Wood, a naval officer and the most unassuming of explorers, who became the first to climb into the hospitable mountain heartland of Central Asia and the first to follow to its source the great river Oxus (or Amu Darya.) Exploring Angkhor - Henri Mouhot Born in France, Mouhot spent most of his career in Russia as a teacher and then in the Channel Islands. A philologist by training, he also took up natual history and it was with the support of the Royal Zoological Society that in 1858 he set out for South East Asia. From Siam (Thailand) he penetrated Cambodia and Laos, where he died; but not before reaching unknown Angkhor and becoming the first to record and depict the most extensive and magnificent temple complex in the world. His discovery provided the inspiration for a succession of subsequent French expeditions up the Mekong. Over the Karakorams - Francis Edward Younghusband As leader of the 1904-5 British military expedition to Lhasa and as promoter of the early assaults on Mount Everest, Younghusband came to epitomize Himalayan endeavour. To the mountain he also owed his spiritual conversion from gung-ho solider to founder of the World Congress of Faiths. His initiation came in 1887 when, as the climax to journey from Peking across the Gobi desert, he determines to reach India over the unexplored Mustagh Pass in the Karakorams - "the most difficult and dangerous achievement in these mountains so far" (S.Hedin). Trials in Tibet - Ekai Kawaguchi By the 1890's the capital of "forbidden" Tibet, unseen by a foreigner since Huc's visit, represented the greatest challenge to exploration. Outright adventurers like the dreadful Henry Savage Landor competed with dedicated explorers like Sven Hedin, all succumbed to to a combination of official vigilance and physical hardship. The exception, and the winner in "the race for Lhasa", was a Buddhist monk from Japan whose expedition consisted of himself and two sheep. Ekai Kawaguchi was supposedly a pilgrim seeking religious texts. His faith was genuine and often tested, as during this 1900 excursion into western Tibet; but he is also thought to have been an agent of the British government in India.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great explorers were the celebrities of their day - the romance and danger of their daring expeditions captured the public imagination and the world's headlines to an extraordinary degree. Not all of them lived to tell the tale, of course, but those who emerged triumphant from jungle, desert or polar wasteland were hailed as if returning from beyond the grave. Journalists vied for their stories and publishers rushed their first-hand accounts of exciting and dangerous journeys into print for a wide and voracious readership. Acclaimed travel historian John Keay introduces this selection of the best of these first-hand narratives, including those of John Ross and John Franklin, writing about their experiences in the Arctic; Richard Burton's account of his search for the source of the Nile; John Speke on Lake Victoria; David Livingstone and Henry Stanley's adventures in central Africa; Alexander McKenzie's first crossing of America and Meriwether Lewis's encounter with the Shoshonee; Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen's voyages to the poles; and the poignant last words of William Wills in Australia and Robert Scott's In Extremis. Keay includes the experiences of four remarkable twentieth-century explorers: Hiram Bingham on the discovery of Machu Picchu; Wilfred Thesiger on Arabia's Empty Quarter; Edmund Hillary on reaching the summit of Everest; and Harry St John Bridger Philby facing despair and defeat in the Arabian desert.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places East and Central Africa written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the Sudanese - James Bruce Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1771, a century before the search for the source of the White Nile became headline news. His descriptions of the cruelties and orgies at Gondar, the Ethiopian capital, were greeted with disbelief; so was his account of the Sudanese rulers, and their queens, at Sennar. He was later shown to be an accurate observer as well as the eighteenth century's most intrepid traveller. Not the Source of the Nile - Richard Francis Burton In Burton a brilliant mind and dauntless physique were matched with a restless spirit and a deeply troubled soul to produce the most complex of characters. Contemptuous of other mortals, including Speke, his companion and rival, he found solace only in the extremities of erudition and adventure. A Glimpse of Lake Victoria - John Hanning Speke In July 1858, while returning from Lake Tanganyika with Burton, Speke made a solo excursion to the north in search of an even larger lake reported by an Arab informant. Although partially blind and unable to ascertain its extent, he named this lake "Victoria" and boldly declared it the long sought source of the White Nile. The Reservoir of the Nile - Samuel White Baker Amongst professional explorers and big game hunters, none was as successful as Baker. A bluff and plausible figure, wealthy and resourceful, he conducted his explorations on the grand scale, invariably reached his goal and invariably reaped the rewards. Last Days - David Livingstone Livingstone was nurtured in poverty and religious fervour. He reached southern Africa as a missionary doctor but, more suited to solitary exploration, edged north in a series of pioneering journeys into the interior. Encounters on the Upper Congo - Henry Morton Stanley Stanley made his name as an explorer by tracking down Livingstone in 1871. But obscure Welsh origins, plus the adoption of US citizenship and professional journalism, did not endear him to London's geographical establishment. His response was to out-travel all contemporaries, beginning with the first ever coast-to-coast crossing of equatorial Africa. A Novice at Large - Joseph Thomson Barely twenty and just out of Edinburgh University, Thompson was unexpectedly employed on the Royal Geographical Society's 1878 expedition to the Central African lakes. Unlike Burton he admired Africans; unlike Stanley he would not fight them. His motto - "he who goes slowly, goes safely; he who goes safely, goes far" - was never more seriously tested that when, just six weeks inland from Dar es Salaam, his first expedition lost Keith Johnston, its leader and Thompson's only European companion.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places North America written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Crossing of America - Alexander Mackenzie "Endowed by nature with an acquisitive mind and an enterprising spirit", Mackenzie, a Scot engaged in the Canadian fur trade, resolved, as he out it "to test the practicability of penetrating across the continent of America". In 1789 he followed a river (the Mackenzie) to the sea; but it turned out to be the Arctic Ocean. He tried again in 1793 and duly reached the Pacific at Queen Charlotte Sound in what is now British Columbia. Although this was his first recorded overland crossing of the continent, Mackenzie was not given to trumpeting his achievement. In his narrative it passes without celebration and very nearly without mention. Meeting the Shoshonee - Meriwether Lewis As Thomas Jefferson's personal secretary, Lewis was chosen to lead the US government's 1804-5 expedition to explore (and to establish US interests) from Mississippi to the Pacific. Travelling up the Missouri river to the continental divide in Montana, Lewis left the main party under his colleague William Clark, and scouted ahead. With everything now dependant on securing the goodwill of the formidable Shoshonee, he showed admirable caution; but the issue was eventually decided by a fortuitous reunion between the Indian wife of one of his men and her long-lost brethren.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places South America written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eating Dirt in Venezuela - Alexander von Humboldt Geographer, geologist, naturalist, anthropologist, physician and philosopher, Baron von Humboldt brought to exploration a greater range of enquiry than any contemporary. Also an indomitable traveller, particularly in the Orinoco/Amazon basin (1799-1804), he often invited danger but always in the cause of scientific observation. The interest of his narratives therefore lies primarily in the author's insatiable curiosity and in the erudition that allowed him to generalize from his observations. A classic example is his ever deadpan disquisition on earth-eating. It occurs in the middle of a hair-raising account of descending the Orinoco in Venezuela. Iron Rations in Amazonia - Henry Savage Landor Bar Antarctica, Everest and the Empty Quarter, twentieth-century explorers have largely had to contrive their challenges. Landor went one better and contrived the hazards. From Japan, Korea, Central Asia, Tibet, and Africa he returned, always alone, with ever more improbable claims and ever more extravagant tales. The climax came in 1911 with Across Unknown South America, the sort of book that gave exploration a bad name. His route, irrelevant and seldom "unknown", nevertheless demanded superhuman powers of endurance as when the expedition marched without food for fifteen days. The Discovery of Machu Picchu - Hiram Bingham Just when it seemed as if all the "forbidden cities" had been entered and the "lost civilisations" found, there occurred one of the most sensational discoveries in the history of travel. Hiram Bingham, the son of missionary parents in Hawaii, was a lecturer in Latin American history at Yale and Berkeley who devoted his vocations to retracing the routes of Spanish conquest and trade in Columbia and Peru. He was drawn to the high Andes near Cuzco and to the awesome gorges of the Urubamba River by rumours about the existence there of the lost capital and last retreat of the Incas. Machu Picchu was neither; but it richly rewarded his heroic endeavour in reaching it. After excavation by Bingham in 1912 and 1915, it was revealed as the best preserved of the Inca cities and South America's most impressive site.
Download or read book A Winter in Arabia written by Freya Stark and published by Tauris Parke. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freya Stark is most famous for her travels in Arabia at a time when very few men, let alone women, had fully explored its vast hinterlands. In 1934, she made her first journey to the Hadhramaut in what is now Yemen - the first woman to do so alone. Even though that journey ended in disappointment, sickness and a forced rescue, Stark, undeterred, returned to Yemen two years later. Starting in Mukalla and skirting the fringes of the legendary and unexplored Empty Quarter, she spent the winter searching for Shabwa - ancient capital of the Hadhramaut and a holy grail for generations of explorers. From within Stark's beautifully-crafted and deeply knowledgeable narrative emerges a rare and exquisitely-rendered portrait of the customs and cultures of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. "A Winter in Arabia" is one of the most important pieces of literature on the region and a book that placed Freya Stark in the pantheon of great writers and explorers of the Arab World. To listen to her voice is to hear the rich echoes of a land whose 'nakedness is clothed in shreds of departed splendour'.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places Siberia and Alaska written by John Keay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stranded on Bering Island - Georg Wilhelm Steller As physician and scientific know-all on Vitus Bering's 1741 voyage, Steller shared its triumphs, including landing the first Europeans in Alaska. He also shared its disasters. Returning across the north Pacific to Russian Kamchatka, the crew was stricken with scurvy and the vessel grounded. Bering and half his men would die; the others barely survived nine months of Arctic exposure. They owed much to the German-born Steller whose response to each crisis was invariably right, although no less irksome for being so. The Walk to Moscow - John Dundas Cochrane A naval officer made redundant by the end of the Napoleonic wars, Cochrane offered his services to African exploration. They were declined. He then hit on the idea of making the first solo journey round the world on foot. Heading east, he left Dieppe in 1820 and after some scarcely credible Siberian excursions, reached the Pacific opposite Alaska. There the enterprise foundered when he fell for, and married, a doe-eyed Kamchatkan teenager. In this breathless account of the stages between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the greatest ever "pedestrian traveller" betrays both his extraordinary stamina and his emotional vulnerability.
Download or read book A Hologram for the King written by Dave Eggers and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Book Award Finalist, a New York Times bestseller and one of the most highly-acclaimed books of the year, A Hologram for the King is a sprawling novel about the decline of American industry from one of the most important, socially-aware novelists of our time. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman named Alan Clay pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment--and a moving story of how we got here.
Download or read book The Spanish Element in Our Nationality written by M. Elizabeth Boone and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” delves beneath the traditional “English-only” narrative of U.S. history, using Spain’s participation in a series of international exhibitions to illuminate more fully the close and contested relationship between these two countries. Written histories invariably record the Spanish financing of Columbus’s historic voyage of 1492, but few consider Spain’s continuing influence on the development of U.S. national identity. In this book, M. Elizabeth Boone investigates the reasons for this problematic memory gap by chronicling a series of Spanish displays at international fairs. Studying the exhibition of paintings, the construction of ephemeral architectural space, and other manifestations of visual culture, Boone examines how Spain sought to position itself as a contributor to U.S. national identity, and how the United States—in comparison to other nations in North and South America—subverted and ignored Spain’s messages, making it possible to marginalize and ultimately obscure Spain’s relevance to the history of the United States. Bringing attention to the rich and understudied history of Spanish artistic production in the United States, “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” recovers the “Spanishness” of U.S. national identity and explores the means by which Americans from Santiago to San Diego used exhibitions of Spanish art and history to mold their own modern self-image.
Download or read book Relentless Pursuit written by Samuel M. Katz and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2003-09-13 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Al Queda's war on America did not start on September 11, 2001. Just ask the Diplomatic Security Service. It was on February 6, 1993, that the United States was first attacked on its own soil by foreign terrorists. A zealous band of Middle Easterners, holy warriors determined to punish the U.S. for its supposed transgressions against Islam, packed over a ton of home made explosives into the back of a rented van. They drove their bomb across the Hudson from New Jersey, maneuvered it through downtown traffic and parked it in the underground garage at the Vista Hotel, beneath the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They lit a long fuse, which allowed them time to get back to New Jersey to watch the results of the explosion on CNN. They hoped to topple one mammoth tower into the other and kill ten thousand people or more. Miraculously, only six people were killed. Most of the group were captured within a week, but the mastermind behind the attack, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, had immediately gone to JFK airport to fly to Pakistan. Before leaving, he phoned the Associated Press and claimed responsibility for the bombing in the name of the Arab Liberation Army, a terrorist group led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden. A succession of such brazen crimes has revealed complex connections among terrorist groups with an implacable hostility toward Western civilization. Outrages such as the assassination of the Jewish Defense League founder Meier Kahane, a huge plot in the Philippines to plant bombs on intercontinental airlines and to assassinate the Pope, the bombing of U.S. embassies, culminating in the African embassy bombings of 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 1999, and the devastating attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 have made it clear that a worldwide network of terrorists led by Osama bin Laden is making war on the United States. On the front lines combating these terrorists in 150 countries around the world have been the 1,200 agents of the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service. A little-known but highly effective branch of the government, the DSS is the one arm of federal law enforcement with international powers of arrest. These agents maintain close ties to local police commanders in many countries and can entice informants with bounties of up to $4,000,000. After a challenging international search, it was DSS agents in Pakistan who captured Ramzi Yousef. DSS agents have been in the vanguard of the War on Terrorism long before it was declared. In Relentless Pursuit, Samuel Katz review the escalating series of terrorist attacks on the U.S. during the last decade, including those in many foreign countries and finally in New York and Washington. In the process, he tells the gripping story of the DSS and its agents protecting us and our representatives here and abroad. Katz's detailed, personal, on-the-ground anecdotes bring home the contexts and linkages of the War on Terrorism that has been fought on our behalf by the DSS since the 1980s. Relentless Pursuit is a stirring tribute to an unsung group of brave Americans. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Gleason s Pictorial Drawing room Companion written by Maturia Murray Ballou and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gleason s Pictorial written by and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Little History of the World written by E. H. Gombrich and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E. H. Gombrich's Little History of the World, though written in 1935, has become one of the treasures of historical writing since its first publication in English in 2005. The Yale edition alone has now sold over half a million copies, and the book is available worldwide in almost thirty languages. Gombrich was of course the best-known art historian of his time, and his text suggests illustrations on every page. This illustrated edition of the Little History brings together the pellucid humanity of his narrative with the images that may well have been in his mind's eye as he wrote the book. The two hundred illustrations—most of them in full color—are not simple embellishments, though they are beautiful. They emerge from the text, enrich the author's intention, and deepen the pleasure of reading this remarkable work. For this edition the text is reset in a spacious format, flowing around illustrations that range from paintings to line drawings, emblems, motifs, and symbols. The book incorporates freshly drawn maps, a revised preface, and a new index. Blending high-grade design, fine paper, and classic binding, this is both a sumptuous gift book and an enhanced edition of a timeless account of human history.
Download or read book The New Urban Frontier written by Neil Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban 'frontiers', the author explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction, and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor, and the homeless as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge.
Download or read book The New York Times Book Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1991-04 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents extended reviews of noteworthy books, short reviews, essays and articles on topics and trends in publishing, literature, culture and the arts. Includes lists of best sellers (hardcover and paperback).
Download or read book A Vanished World written by Wilfred Thesiger and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wilfred Thesiger's superb portraits of tribal peoples have earned him worldwide recognition as a photographer. Using a simple box camera which had belonged to his father, Thesiger began his photographic career during a short hunting trip in Ethiopia in 1930 and used the same camera to photograph hostile Danakil tribesmen when he returned three years later to explore the Awash river. Whilst in the Sudan, and now equipped with a Leica 35mm, Thesiger portrayed the Muslim tribes in Northern Darfur, pagan Nuer in the Western Nile swamps and Nuba wrestlers. Among Ethiopia's Danakil he had travelled as a European accompanied by servants, but here he lived increasingly on equal terms with his followers and his photography mirrors this changed attitude. The dramatic visual impact of Arabia's deserts fully awakened Thesiger's latent talent for portraiture and composition. During his five years in Arabia from 1945-50 he was able to depict his Bedu companions with a sensitivity and power only suggested by his pre-war photographs. Conceived in the harshest of settings, these Arabian pictures bear eloquent testimony to the inspirational effect the desert had upon this great traveller. In contrast, tranquil images of reeds, waterways and lagoons characterize Thesiger's matchless portraits of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq -- in which he captures a world which has now completely disappeared. In the seldom visited regions of Kurdistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan Thesiger took many photographs of their striking inhabitants who remained thoroughly unselfconscious in front of the camera -- as did the graceful tribespeople of northern Kenya and Tanzania later in Thesiger's eventful life. These unique portraits were all taken under exceptional conditions. Together they provide a magnificent pictorial record of diverse cultures and vanished worlds"--Publisher description.
