5 comments about Vertical Ethiopia, Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa.

1. This is an amazing book. Both the writing and the photography are incredible - you get a real feel for the experience of climbing in a gorgeous and rugged landscape, and at the same time you learn a tremendous amount about Ethiopia and its people.



2. I am neither a rock climber nor an adventurer so when a friend sent it to me, I wasn't sure it was my kind of thing... but wow! Its a great read! The pictures alone are well worth the cover price, but it is
   Burkhardt's writing that is really fun and compelling, and often downright funny. Initially I wasn't aware that the intro was written by someone else and was a bit bored by mundane geography and geology facts, but within the first paragraph of Majka's writing she had me laughing out loud at her childhood impressions of Ethiopia via dinner table commands to finish her food due to African famines and singing all the verses of We are the World out loud with her friends. That was my first impression as well and I didn't know much else about the country today until I read this book. The rock climbing shots are amazing and the photos of the locals are truly beautiful. My favorite part of the story was a hair- raising tale of the climbers ascending some gnarly vertical spire only to get to the top where a bunch of village kids met them after scrambling up the back. I learned alot about Ethiopia and rock climbing, but mostly I enjoyed Majka's stories and Rogel's photos. I read it in one long sitting and leave it out on my coffee table to thumb through the pictures over and over...!



3. The incredible photography is what first grabs you - and indeed, it's published as a beautiful coffee-table style book. But once you start reading the text, it's hard to stop. Burhardt is a gifted storyteller and a poetic wordsmith. She shines an insightful light on a country that is so rich and complex - and so misunderstood. You will feel as if you are living the adventure with her - which is the sign of any great read.



4. This book is cool! Burhardt's photos and text capture the collage-like qualities of true adventure. Along with Burhardt and her intrepid companions, we get to feel our way through the colors, textures, people, and, of course, rock of Ethiopia. What a place, what a journey, what a story.



5. Spellbinding. The introduction, written by a different author, presented a history of exploration in Ethiopia in relatively dry mountaineering terms -- typical "stiff upper lip" and all that. I was prepared to wade through a pedestrian account of a climber in a remote corner of the world. What I found, however, was the sheer joy and exuberance of a young climber rediscovering a forgotten gem. The climbing, though superbly photographed and described, takes a back seat to well-limned essays about Ethiopia itself, and the author's incredulity at the history, beauty and current state of the country and its people. Highly recommended for travelers and climbers alike.

5 comments about Sahara Overland, 2nd: A Route and Planning Guide (Trailblazer).

1. Chris Scott's book was worth the wait. I've been exploring the deserts of the United States and Mexico for decades, and my wife and I plan to ship our vehicle to Morocco and explore the Sahara soon. This book has left no question unanswered.

   Chris's approach is always engaging, but exhaustive where necessary. He isn't afraid to be honest in equipment choices. For example, since he is from the U.K. I expected the vehicle selection chapter to be a Tom Sheppard-esque sermon about the perfection of the Land Rover. Instead, while pointing out the strengths of Land Rovers, he quite bluntly states that anyone needing the utmost in reliability should buy a Toyota Land Cruiser instead. The section on vehicle preparation is full of good, practical advice.

   The route descriptions are excellent (and you can visit the author's web site for updates). However, I would recommend this book strongly to anyone considering traveling by vehicle in any desert in the world--there's that much information in it.




2. Sahara Overland: A Route & Planning Guide is the first truly comprehensive guidebook to one of the world's most compelling and challenging environments, North Africa's Sahara Desert. Ranging from the Moroccan Atlas Mountains to the Red Sea, Sahara Overland is ideal for Saharan travelers whether for a weekend excursion, a week long vacation, or a season spanning safari. Thirty-five detailed itineraries are available, covering more than 15,000 miles through nine countries: Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Egypt. The only Saharan guidebook covering all aspects of traveling the great desert by vehicle, Sahara Overland provides tips on how not to get lost, and what to do when things go wrong. Chris Scott's informative, "traveler friendly" text is enhanced with fifty maps and more than 300 b&w and color photographs. If you are planning a trip through the Sahara, begin with acquiring and throughly reading Chris Scott's Sahara Overland.



3. I am an experienced desert driver and bought Sahara Overland in the planning stage of a Gilf Kebir and Uweinat trip that I put together with a bunch of friends when I was living in Egypt. On preparation, this is the bible. It is an absolute MUST get and DEFINITE need.What cars (although a bunch of good cars are not covered, and to his credit Chris Scott acknowledges this) and how to prepare them, advice on equipment and supplies, emergency repairs, all invaluable.
   
   Advice on how to drive .... correct in places but dubious in others. Gilf trip GPS points were all out by a long way ... we thought as much before the trip when we plugged them into Ozzy Explorer and noticed that they kinda didn't fit with the sat images and the old Brit military maps. I cannot comment on other trips, but get alternative way points for the Gilf, the ones in the book are wrong.
   
   Still, apart from these minor foibles, this book contains a wealth of sound advice, and is one of my favourite types of armchair travel books, not only does it stir my imagination (I dream of desert trips), but Chris writes with a dry laconic and sarcastic humour that put a smile on my face whenever I picked up this book.



4. I bought this book out of curiosity after reading an excerpt on the internet. I was totally absorbed in the book for some time after recieveing it. If you have any notion of traveling in the Sahara on your own or in a guided tour you need to read this book. The amount of information boggles ones mind, especially when it's delivered in a format that doesn't bore one to tears.



5. There are only 2 books worth buying if you intend to spend more than a couple of days overlanding: Tom Sheppard's "Vehicle-Dependent Expedition Guide" and this one. Whether you plan to go to the Sahara or not, there is so much information packed into this thick, single-spaced, no-nonsense guide, that you could simply rename it "Overlanding: A Route And Planning Guide." Sahara-specific information is covered in less than half the book.

5 comments about False Papers.

1. Andre Aciman is an astoundingly gifted writer. When I first read his memoir "Out of Egypt" five years ago, I was amazed by its wit and wisdom, its precious and seamless blend of irony and deep feeling. Having followed his career in writing ever since, I am thrilled by the recent publication of "False Papers," a magnificent compilation of fourteen of his best essays from the past few years. These pieces can be seen as a kind of sequel to "Out of Egypt," an extension of its central theme of exile in new, often unexpected directions. In "Out of Egypt" Aciman vividly reminisced about his childhood years in Alexandria up to their dismal end, when amid the virulent anti-Semitism of Nasser's Egypt he and his family were expelled. The essays of "False Papers," by contrast, pertain more to the intellectual and emotional residues of exile-in particular the "confused, back-and-forth, up-and-around" way of thinking, remembering, desiring, and relating to oneself and to others that exile seems to foster. Aciman writes poignantly but analyzes ruthlessly: he may be one of the most introspective of current writers, and at a time when memoirs and confessions line the shelves, but refreshingly, he is also one of the least self-indulgent and complacent. Complexity does not faze him. He excels at finding a concrete metaphor, typically from far afield, to convey some paradox of memory or desire: for instance, his surprisingly apt use of the financial term "arbitrage" to illustrate how one might "firm up the present...by experiencing it from the future as a moment in the past," much like an arbitrageur might trade securities in different markets to benefit from different prices. He can qualify thoughts and impressions without diluting them into a muddle, and even, occasionally, cast doubt on the relevance of his most reliable figures and tropes-to wit, exile-without sacrificing any of his writing's underlying pathos. Few, in short, can match Aciman when it comes to a grasp of the fitful economy of the soul, and even fewer could hope to write about it so deftly and affectingly.

   Those, like myself, who have already read and enjoyed Aciman's essays on their first appearance in print will want to own a book that brings them all together. Those who have not are to be envied the opportunity to read them in "False Papers" for the first time.




2. I found Mr.Aciman's essays suffering from a infatuation with his own self-righteousness. Preachy, bigoted and too often innacurate, he bakes a quite dull mixture of bloated prose and shallow, prejuciced view about many subjects one suspects he knows little or nothing about. The books distils the grandiose retorique of cocktail-party chatter and leaves the reader with a sad sense of having wasted his own time. My advice would be to seriously check it out at a public library before devoting time and money to this thing. Life's too short for this kind of drivel.



3. Andre Aciman is our contemporary Proust--the same elegance, the same penetrating eye, the same love for memory and its cinematic clarities.



4. André Aciman's collection of essays on place and nostalgia is as absolutely gorgeously written as his superb family memoir OUT OF EGYPT, and covers the amazing array of places he's lived and left: Alexandria (first and foremost), Rome, Paris, and New York, with side visits to sites important to his sense of himself, Illiers-Combray (Proust's village) and Bethelhem. At his best, Aciman is funny, incisive and extraordinarily clever; his best essays involve sites where he can focus more on other people than just himself, and he can allow his wit and empathy to emerge. Since his topic is always nostalgia here, it is inevitable that much of his critical focus should be himself (as he points out repeatedly and intelligently, the urge towards nostalgia is always as much a yearning for one's self and one's memories as it is for a particular place). There are times, however, when his interest in his self tends more towards a carefully nurtured narcissism than an incisive self-critique and when you want to roll your eyes at the insufferably precious delight with which he can regard himself.



5. Like other Aicman books rhis really worth reading, some wonderful insights, into a long vanished world.

5 comments about West With the Night.

1. Much more than a memoir, Beryl Markham's work is a means of transport, not dissimilar to her beloved plane. It took me back to the Africa I lived in as a young bride, to its stark beauty, its dignified and desparate people, the language of its silences. Her tale of matter-of-fact mercies, and of cruelty equally unremarkable, is the stuff of life, as full of hope as of despair, for its millions of people. Her sensitivity instructs us in things as disparate as a young zebra's personal quirks, or the way the setting sun reflects off a downed plane creating an illusory lake in the dry Serenghettti. We learn of the hunger of a dying man for news from the city, and of the joy of friendship restored, but mostly, we learn of the heart and mind of a brave, independent woman for whom Africa is, eternally, home.



2. As a child growing up with her father in Africa, Beryl Markham faced down lions and wild boar. As an adult she trained race horses before learning to fly airplanes and becoming a bush pilot. Eventually she became the first pilot, female or male, to fly west with the night and cross the Atlantic ocean solo from Europe to North America. Markham brings the African bush to life with stories of boar hunts and elephant hunts. Of horse races and airplane flights over desert terrain. She lived a courageous life in a time when girls were only supposed to wear dresses and play with dolls and flying airplanes was a man's job. Highly inspirational to read!
   
   There's so much to talk about in mother-daughter book clubs or any book club. How was Markham's life different from so many of the girls in her time? How would her life have been different if her mother was also in Africa raising her?
   
   This book is beautifully written; I've read it three times and each reading I glean more and more from it. I highly recommend it for anyone in high school or older.



3. Absolutely captivating personal account of times and places long gone. As a fan of "Heat of the Sun," this book was a treasure.



4. I agree with Hemingway that this is a piece of high literature that reads like fiction and spreads itself before the reader like a well-produced film. It drove me to learn more about the author and her life.



5. I read this book because someone suggested my family might have been related to Beryl Markham, which is not the case, but...
   What a woman - this is a true account of one of the first bush pilots in Africa, Beryl Markham, who was the first pilot to fly westward across the Atlantic from England. Although there is some dispute whether she actually wrote this autobiographical account (some say that her paramour, who edited the book, actually wrote it - she never confirmed or denied it), the stories are true and fascinating, encouraging the reader to learn more about her. The writing style is wonderful and interesting - no wonder Hemingway loved it. You wouldn't know this book was first published so many years ago.

5 comments about Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure.

1. This well written book documents the evolution of Safaris from the early Boer settlers through the modern camera hunters.



2. A wonderful book covering the beginnings of the African Safari to the present. Many current authors use this book as reference for their own books such as Peter Beard, Bibi Jordan, Kuki Gallman, and Mirella Ricciardi. If all of these authors use this book as a reference and quote it throughout their own books it has just got be good. I recommend it highly for any African Safari book collection!



3. Safari: A Chronicle Of Adventure details the history of the African safari from its first expedition of 1836 to modern times. Bull is an environmentalist, so his survey Safari isn't your typical gun-hunter's celebration of good old days, but a survey of conflicts between hunting and conservation, weapons and transport, game control and more. From economics and financers of the safari to mishaps, adventures, and famous personalities involved in safaris, vintage black and white photos pair with wide-ranging personal and political stories for maximum effect.



4. This book, Safari, is one of the best books I have ever read. The
   chapters can be read individually yet read perfectly as a whole.
   I bought a number of the books as gifts. They were VERY well received.
   Thank you for this excellent product.



5. Excellent book steeped in history and written with great style. One can almost feel Africa and how Safaris changed people as well as a country.

No comments about Global Etiquette Guide to Africa and the Middle East.

5 comments about African Silences.

1. I grabbed this book because it is so hard to find books about West Africa, and because it appeared to be so well reviewed. But I hated it! The wildlife aspects didn't captivate me; but the writer's whole attitude to the people he met alternately shocked and dismayed me. He talks of people's villages "littering" the landscape; refers to languages as "dialects" without seeming ever to recognise the incredible complexity of the culture in Senegambia; patronises the people he meets; never bothers to learn the correct names for things ("tom-toms" is not really a term used for African drummers) ... refers to how he likes his African musicians "wild" and gets dismayed when they instead start wearing "modish trousers" in Paris ... His driver buys a charm to hang from his window but discards it, jealous of his compatriot's "shiny" souvenirs ... He treats people like children and the descriptions of wildlife fail to grip. A very very great disappointment.



2. I have tremendously enjoyed reading this book. This book takes a reader on a perilous journey in Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast as well as Gabon and Zaire. Author's prose, as always, is powerful and lyrical, shows the grim reality of people and wildlife in the area. Despite the previous reviewer's opinion, I am giving this book the best rating possible. The author's intention was to document the reality. This book is not work of fiction. In my opinion the book is excellent.



3. I have tremendously enjoyed reading this book. This book takes a reader on a perilous journey in Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast as well as Gabon and Zaire. Author's prose, as always, is powerful and lyrical, shows the grim reality of people and wildlife in the area. Despite the previous reviewer's opinion, I am giving this book the best rating possible. The author's intention was to document the reality. This book is not work of fiction. In my opinion the book is excellent.



4. This book had me laughing out loud on the beaches of Zanzibar. Matthiessen turned the landscape into a fascinating wealth of experience, and simultaneously managed to describe the most frightening experiences with wit and humour. He is a travel writer of great skill, and certainly inspired me not only to travel through Africa, but also to the thrills of light aircraft flights. Meanwhile, in more mundane settings, such as taking a shower, his encounter with the mongoose left me in hysterics. Sat as we were, in a resort that had run out of Coca Cola, much to the horror of the assembled guests, Matthiessen most light-heartedly led me through more daring scrapes and moments of sublime comedy than I could ever experience at a beach resort. What a fantastic counter-balance to the average holiday travails.



5. _African Silences_ by Peter Matthiessen is a well-written account of three different trips to the continent by the author.
   
   The first essay detailed a trip he made in 1978 to West Africa, accompanying primatologist Gilbert Boese on a wildlife survey of Senegal, Gambia, and Ivory Coast. When the journey began Matthiessen was hopeful, as it was a region he had not previously visited and included such varied terrains as long-grass savanna, forest, and the Sahel, an arid country that stretches all the way east to Sudan, a land of "parched thornbrush of baobab and scrub acacia, red termite hills, starlings and hornbills."
   
   Matthiessen did see some wildlife. In Niokolo Koba, the last stronghold of large animals in Senegal, he spied baboons, several monkey species, several antelope species (such as duiker and waterbucks), hippos, forest buffalo, warthogs and parakeets. Along the Senegalese coast, in a mangrove swamp, he spotted the unusual palm-nut vulture, a striking white bird that lives mainly on the nut of the oil palm.
   
   Largely though the author saw remarkably little wildlife. He noted that some researchers felt that some mammals - such as the black rhino, wildebeest, and zebra - if they ever occurred in West Africa, vanished long ago. Others believed that the poor soil of the region could not support much in the way of large game animals, though Matthiessen pointed out its similarities with the soil of the famous East African game plains. No, West Africa lacks wildlife simply because it is more populous than East Africa and has been inhabited a great deal longer, with people present raising crops of pearl millet and sorghum, burning woodland, and hunting for at least the last 2000 years, competing for the same land favored by the megafauna. In addition, there isn't much impetus to preserve wildlife for the tourist trade as there is in East Africa and also the populous nations of this region are filled with poor, protein-starved desperate people, viewing wildlife as a much needed part of their diet. Indeed in several languages in West Africa the word for "animal" is the same word for "meat." As a result, most of the region has virtually "unobstructed poaching" and in some nations, such as Nigeria, it is unusual to see any live wild animal outside of its one game reserve (the black rhino, giant eland, and all but 9 of its 32 hoofed mammal species have gone extinct in Nigeria).
   
   His second essay takes place in the same year but in Zaire, where the author journeyed to look for the very rarely seen Congo peacock (according to one source at the time only one non-African had ever seen one live in the wild) and the gorilla. After a delay in the broken-down, littered, depressing city of Kinshasa, the author journeyed deep into the forested interior (Zaire is huge, comparable in size to Europe). While Matthiessen got some good observations of gorillas and delighted in some of the animals unique to the highlands, such as the red-faced woodland warbler, regal sunbird, and the L'Hoesti monkey, the peafowl eluded him.
   
   The longest and most enjoyable essay in the book was that describing his 1986 sojourn through Central Africa to determine the status of the small forest elephant of the Congo Basin. Since the savanna or bush elephant (_Loxodonta africana africana_) had at the time been imperiled by rampant ivory poaching, conservationists feared that poachers would turn to the smaller forest race (_L. a. cyclotis_). Ivory trade proponents argued that large numbers of the forest race were hidden in the dense jungle and could continue to support the ivory trade while ecologists feared that in fact the forested interior was inhospitable habitat and forest elephant numbers had always been low. In addition to the importance this would have on getting international support to curtail or stop the ivory trade, researchers wanted to know if there really was a third race, perhaps even a separate species, of elephant, the pygmy elephant (_L. pumilio_). Did it exist at all? Were they merely smaller members of the more common forest race?
   
   Matthiessen and those he traveled with found many surprises, such as the presence of "bush" elephants deep in the forest. Were they refugees from the ivory trade, wandering individuals who had simply journeyed deep into the jungle, or did they always exist there, perhaps genetic evidence that the now nearly continuous forest was once broken up into a number of refugia, separated by savanna and grassland? They also found many individuals showed characteristics of both bush and forest races, indicating a very wide zone of hybridization and speculated that the "pygmy elephant" was merely a juvenile forest elephant, which as a race had offspring independent at an earlier age.
   
   The entire expedition made for great reading. It was a long one, covering 7000 miles, beginning in Kenya and ending in Libreville, on Gabon's Atlantic coast, largely concentrating on the Central African Republic, Gabon, and Zaire. Made in a light plane, it was a perilous journey, the pilot and the author at the mercy of the titanic thunderstorms of the region, continually having to risk arrest by landing in unauthorized areas to refuel, dealing with corrupt officials, and almost never able to put down thanks to the "awesome inhospitality of the equatorial forest," as any light plane landing in the jungle would "disappear into this greenness like a stone dropped from the air into the sea." The immense forest, "undulating in all directions to the green horizon," a "dark green sea," was, while dangerous to fly over, nevertheless magnificent, containing all the greens in the world - "[f]orest green and gray-green, jade, emerald, and turquoise, pond green, pea green," a land of hard to find but nevertheless remarkable wildlife, including gorillas, chimpanzees, okapi, bongos, buffalo, and such primates as the vervet or green monkey, a carrier for the dangerous "green monkey disease," said to be related to the AIDS virus. Matthiessen also spent some time with a group of pygmies, the Mbuti.

2 comments about Mauritius Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs).

1. There aren't many travel books available with info on Mauritius. I've looked at all I could get my hands on and the Globetrotter Travel Guide on Mauritius with the pull-out Travel Map is by far the best. The books is loaded with heaps of useful information for first time travellers to Mauritius with tips for visitors, places to stay and eat, attractions and regional profiles. The best part was the map giving more detail of the whole island as well as the major regional towns on the island. The other travel books fell short in this area.



2. This book was just what we needed ready for our trip and even came with a great map so worth every cent. Plenty of info and lots of tips so well worth getting

No comments about Mozambique, 4th: The Bradt Travel Guide.

2 comments about Inside Africa South & West.

1. This book and the companion North and East volume are extraordinarily beautiful and offer images of a rich array of African homes -- traditional, contemporary and intermingled. The photography is excellent and offers images of architecture, art, landscapes and lives. Highly recommended.



2. Having visited South Africa, I have become interested in all things African. This book covers a lot of regions in pictures, and I am pleased with its presence on my coffee table. It makes me want to see even more of Africa.