5 comments about Three Worlds Gone Mad: Dangerous Journeys through the War Zones of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific.

1. I've read everything he has out. Loved it! It's current (as books go), funny, serious and a great read!



2. where are the pictures? He goes to all these places, meets all these different personalities, admits that he has a camera and where are they? Now I don't need pictures in a book for me to read it but his stories I think would be enhanced with photos of his journeys.
   
   The book is good and is part adventure/travel/survival/third world political science. In his travels, Mr. Pelton does not seem to take any easy route to go anywhere. He gets smuggled into Chechnya and tracks down a rebel leader on his own choice. The rebels who are known for kidnapping foriegners and journalists are meanwhile being tracked and bombed by the Russian military. He goes to Bougainville when everyone including the people that live there tell him not too. Why? I think because as he feels that there is a story to tell and it usually is not the "popular" one fed to most news agencies. Case in point is his Chechnya visit, where again he chooses to go to the "terrorists", not to give them a voice, but to get the unpopular side of the story (especially when considering the lack of freedom of the press in Russia). It is an objective look at the history of the Chechnya/Russian relationship and the situation where atrocities are seem to be committed by both sides. He even "interviews" a captured Russian soldier whose handlers casually tell Mr. Pelton he will most likely be executed the next day. The part on Sierra Leone is equally impressive, probably because there has been more press about the atrocities and violence there.
   
   So as long as Mr. Pelton feels the need to travel to different "worlds gone mad", writing the about the lesser known histories and/or conflicts, he will most likely have me as a reader of his books.



3. pelton is at times redundant, but the book moves along w/ just the right momentum to keep your attention. before his book, i had never even heard of Bougainville. this is a good read to store more detailed info. on the 3 places explored by pelton. at the very least, you'll feel smarter than you did before you picked up this book.



4. Another great book by Robert Young Pelton. There's something deeply wrong with this guy going to Chechnya like that, but he gives a great feel of what's going on there at street level, as well as some enlightening history that very few of us have any clue about. The Sierra Leone section tells of that area after things began to settle a little. While much has been written about the wars there and the diamond industry this book really adds a dimension to the Sierra Leone picture for me. As for Bougainville, all I knew was that there was a war there, but had never learned anything about it.
   
   Like all of RYP's books this is a great read and well worth the money.



5. The author shows his personal travel iternary of failed states in Africa, Europe and Asia. They are Sierra Leone, Chechneya, and Bouganville (part of Papua New Guinea). I have traveled widely and even visited some of Pelton's own 100 dangerous places, but I don't think I would travel to these destinations. The author shows the terror of the RUF, and describes the mercenaries of Executive Outcomes. In Chechneya, he shows the terror of the scorthed earth policy of the Russians in their desire to conquer the breakaway province. In Bouganville, he shows how an out of touch government has taken liberties with a remote province. In all three, precious minerals are being exploited for the benefit of an elite. They are diamonds, oil, and copper.
   
   I don't know if I agree completely with all the author states. He relays quite a bit of the mercenaries tales, but these are soldiers of fortune who do not have the local population's interests at heart. In regards to the Chechens, I don't believe the Russians killed their own people to stage a conquest of this province. This is interesting reading, and it gives one man's perspectives.

5 comments about Cape Verde Islands, 3rd: The Bradt Travel Guide.

1. Irwin and Wilson's guide gives you all the factual information you need, and in addition succeeds in capturing the spirit of Cape Verde, with boxes on cultural and historical issues linked to each island. There is no doubt about it: This is the best guide available. If you read German, Rolf Osang's "Kapverdische Inseln" from Dumont is nearly as good and a useful supplement (especially when it comes to photos). The chapters on Cape Verde in Rough Guides' and Lonely Planet's books on West Africa are neither up-to-date nor in-depth enough if you plan to spend more than a few days in Cape Verde (which you should!).

   The appendix on Crioulo language in Irwin and Wilson's book is brief but good. Don't be put off by the nasty details on horrible diseases in the section on health!




2. This was just the sort of thing a hardened backpacker needed. It had all the useful nooks and crannies of info you need - plus the fact that it filled in a lot of the extra info you like to get about a place you're seeing. They gave a great account of the islands' history - it was really moving.



3. I first visited the Cape Verdes in 1987 while researching the ATLANTIC ISLANDS, a sailing guide covering the Azores, Madeira group, Canaries and Cape Verdes, now in its third edition. Getting information on the Cape Verdes in the English language was difficult in the extreme -- if only Aisling and Colum's excellent book had been available then! These days no sane person should visit the islands without reading it first. The Cape Verdes come as something of a culture shock after the Canaries -- this book will explain why, and help you get the most from the experience. Buy it!



4. If you plan on visiting the Islands of Cape Verde, this travel guide is essential. I have not found a better or more thorough guide. I currently live here but I am American and I knew nothing of the islands when I arrived. But after living here a while, I discovered that this book is as accurate as I initially thought. There are few things misspelled but that is to be overlooked by the amount of truely uselful and thorough the information is. I also liked the little touches of background and history on each island. It is very well done.



5. This was the first, but it won't be the last, travel guide I'll buy from the Bradt series.
   
   It contains an outstanding overview of the Islands' geology, political history and economy along with great suggestions for active sports tourism and passive sightseeing.
   
   I was so impressed I bought the Bradt guide to the Canary Islands too.
   
   Both will come in handy on a trans-Atlantic cruise we've booked for this Fall.

No comments about Kilimanjaro & East Africa: A Climbing And Trekking Guide.

1 comments about The Best Of Cairo and Luxor, 2 (Globetrotter Best of Series).

1. I went to Luxor and Cairo earlier in 2008, and brought this book along with the DK guide and Rough Guide to Egypt. All served their purposes, but none of them stood out as the definitive guide. The Best of Cairo is best as a high-level overview of what there is to see and do in Cairo and Luxor, with a page to two pages on each main subject. It was good enough to keep in a cargo pants pocket, but for more information, I had to refer to the DK or Rough Guide. It's not to say that this is a major downside to the book - it's just that in my experience, the Globetrotter series of books are designed as overviews (hence the name "Best Of".)
   
   If you're heading to Egypt, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, along with Egypt (Eyewitness Travel Guides) and the The Rough Guide to Egypt 7 (Rough Guide Travel Guides). All have their uses and you'll come to find that this book will end up in your cargo pants pocket.

No comments about Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs, Fifth Edition (Odyssey Illustrated Guide).

5 comments about West With the Night.

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



2. 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.



3. 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.



4. An excellent book!
   Ernest Hemingway wrote, "She writes rings around us!" and he wasn't just being nice!
   A good story, well written; what more could you ask for?!



5. My grandparents went to East Africa in the 1920s. My grandfather, a Scotsman, was looking for gold, my grandmother, a South African was looking for romance. My mother was born in the year this book opens.
   When I was a child my mother regaled me with stories of scorpions, leopards amd pythons, and this book rekindled my memories of childhood.
   It is a well-written account of a wild child's life in Kenya, hunting with the local people, being hunted by the local animals, and seeing the tribes as they were before tourism took over.
   
   The author seems to take everything in her stride, and nothing seems to bother her. A bull elephant intent on killing her, flying blind over the Med, engine problems over Newfoundland, nothing seems to faze her.
   I wasn't surprised to see that this book flopped on its original release in 1942 - it was an every day account of life as it was then.
   
   But in 2008, things are very different and this is a very good account of early settler life in Kenya, White hunters and early aviation. I was sorry when I finished it, and wished it had been much much longer.

1 comments about Travels in the Interior of Africa (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) (World Literature Series).

1. Great book. Gave me a new outlook on early Africa(1790).
   Would make a wonderful film.

2 comments about Eritrea, 4th (Bradt Travel Guide).

1. This is one of the poorest guidebooks I have ever used!
   
   In strong contrast to Bradt's excellent guide to neighbouring Ethiopia, this guide to Eritrea is so poor it is nearly useless.
   Even before departure, I found that the book just failed to make Eritrea sound exciting - it made it sound dull.
   
   The very weakest points are its maps!
   Can you believe that a full page regional map of say, Western Eritrea, can have a grand total of four (yes, FOUR!) places in that region marked on it, fewer than are marked on the much smaller map for the entire country, and failing to show even the places that are described in the relevant section of the guide???
   The city map for Asmara is a joke (I've uploaded a scanned image of it to see for yourself), with no names marked for most streets, and most of those that are marked being old names that were changed years ago.
   
   Things to see & do? Very few described, very poorly.
   
   History & politics? These chapters look as if they had been contributed by the propaganda department of the Eritrean government, with glorifying accounts of the heroic fight for freedom and no mentioning of the disgraceful present.
   
   Flora & fauna? The author's knowledge seems to end at distinguishing a mammal from a bird - maybe.
   
   The bottom line is that until Bradt gets a new author to rewrite this guide completely, you are far better off reading the shorter but much better chapter on this wonderful country in Lonely Planet's Ethiopia & Eritrea guide than wasting your money, like I did, on ordering this book.
   
   The 2 stars were only given as an acknowledgement for the publisher's effort to put out a separate guide to this unusual destination, not for the actual value of this book which is closer to zero.



2. To my knowledge this is the only guidebook in English devoted solely to Eritrea. The closest comparator is the Lonely Planet guide which covers both Ethiopia and Eritrea. As one might expect in a volume devoted purely to Eritrea, this volume has more information and detail (more maps of specific towns, for example) and the historical discussion of the origins of the independence movement is informative. As another reviewer mentioned, successive political regimes have changed the names of streets in downtown Asmara; in my experience, local people are familiar with both the "traditional" and the "official" names, and the use of the maps in this guide was not problematic. The one aspect in which the Lonely Planet guide tops this book is in that book's walking tours which I found quite useful.

5 comments about I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation.

1. This is in some ways a good and necessary book. It spotlights a nation and a set of problems that most of the world doesn't pay much attention to. But there is a problem. Michela Wrong is too close to the subject and her emotional attachment at times results in the book not being as objective or as good as it might have been. In particular, she seems to have been far too close to Eritrean rebel groups and their leaders.
   
   Eritrea's history isn't about "betrayal". Its about the same problems that most African nations have faced. Rather than face the fact that the problems of Eritrea today are largely self-inflicted wounds, she falls back into blaming colonialism and cold-war politics in really unconvincing ways.
   
   In her coverage of Italian colonial rule, she confuses events in Eritrea with those in Ethiopia. She is also willing to judge Italy to a far higher standard than she applies to the pre or post-independence governments of both countries. She is also more than a little unwilling to understand the role that Italy played in creating Eritrea.
   
   The lowest point in the book is her coverage of Britain's wartime rule of Eritrea. She advances a theory that the british were racist than the italians because their rule produced fewer multiracial children. Somehow she sees superior morality in men who promoted widespread prostitution and produced children which they abandoned. It makes no sense to me. Her logic is also full of wrong assumptions about the number of British in the country and the nature of the occupation.
   
   She also isn't very good about the details of the war. The war in East Africa and in particular the victory at Keren was not a British victory, but a victory of the British Indian Army. Somehow she misses the basic fact that much of the army that conquered and occupied East Africa was Inidian.
   
   The British wanted out of Eritrea and got out of it seven years after the war ended (1952). As they got out, the issue of Ethiopia's historic and economic claims to Eritrea came to the surface. Wrong wishes to blame the united nations for betraying the people of Eritrea. But its not that simple. Eritrea's national identity has no particular good historical basis and arises mostly from the period of Italian rule and the money Italy spent on their colony. Furthermore, its independence results in two weak states in East Africa rather than one. Eritrea and Ethiopia need each other. Economically, independence is a disaster for both.
   
   The war for Eritrea's independence was a pointless waste of lives for everyone involved. Wrong wishes to see it as a justified noble struggle for "freedom", but as events since independence have proved, it was anything but that.
   
   After the overthrow of the Ethiopian government in 1976, horrible things were done in Eritrea and the author gets that part of the story right. Then she goes on to show the bright future Eritrea had before it in 1993 at independence and how everything went so terribly wrong.
   
   But she can't bring herself to hold the right people accountable. She can't bring herself to admit that the rebels she had admired so much once in power turned to be little better than a criminal gang. A gang that destroyed the economy of the country, introduced a dictatorship and then threw the country into a disasterous war with Ethiopia. The world didn't do these things. The world's "betrayal" didn't make these decisions. It was the rebel "freedom fighters" who are responsible.
   
   And thats the fatal flaw in the book. The author wants to give critiques of colonialism and the UN from on high. But the truth is that the country's problems are not a matter of "I didn't do it for you", they are "we did it to ourselves".
   
   The end result of the great "struggle" for Eritrean independence has been an economic disaster for both Ethiopia and Eritrea. The political result is a government running Eritrea that is as bad (or worse) than what the author claims were the "repressive" Ethiopian governments of the 1950s and 1960s. Eritrea's government budget is wasted in preparations for more war with Ethiopia. The country is trapped in a situation where things will never get better. Its not a situation that outsiders should be credited or blamed for.
   
   When the author says things like: "the national character traits forged during a century of colonial and superpower exploitation were about to blow up in Eritrea's face.", she in engaging in massive political self-deception. Her (dated) anti-colonial/anti-imperialism rhetoric leads her to excuse every bad decision made by an African as someone elses fault.
   
   She also goes out of her way to make the American soldiers stationed in Ethiopia in the past look like they were exceptionally bad. Having worked and travelled in Africa, she must know how soldiers behave in most countries. Go to the area around any military base (including those on American soil) and you will find all sorts of unpleasent things going on. I'm not trying to excuse the behavior of anyone, but the selective moral outrage in the book is of little value to anyone.
   
   I wanted to like this book and I want to see the author write more books about Africa. But she needs to put her political ideology to the side and report on Africa as it is. She did a far better job in "In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" than she did in this book.



2. I am from Ogaden, the Somali region still occupied by Ethiopia, and Eritrea's tortured history is pretty similar to ours.
   
   When I bought the book, I Didn't Do It For You, and read John Le carre's powerful commendation on the cover, I took his comments with a grain of salt, thinking he was putting a good word for a colleague. However as I delved into the book, I was surprised to find every laudatory remark made by Le Carre got instant affirmation from my own mind!
   
   This book is very informative and intensely honest. The author's tone is restrained and her style is modest. She avoids polemics because she obviously knows indulging in any propaganda variety tends to undermine one's credibility.
   
   Michela is sympathetic to the Eritreans. However she makes it clear, in her own austere way, that, Issayas, the Eritrean leader and his dictatorial tendencies, has squandered the fruit of the Eritrean struggle, the dream of its people, and the goodwill of Eritrea's friends throughout the world, and thereby rendered the once promising young republic into just another African heartbreak!
   
   Unlike many western authors and scholars who, when writing about the developing countries, tend to sanitize facts to protect the image of their own mother countries, Michela Wrong simply exposes the unpleasant facts for everyone to see. Of the three European countries(The French, Italians, and the British) that colonized the Horn of Africa, the British had been the worst. As a Somali, I know the British were pitifully stingy and penny pinching: for the 75 years they colonized Somaliland, for instance, they built or invested in it practically next to nothing, whereas the Italians built and invested in Eritrea all the machines, factories, and infrastructure, including state of the art railway system, and all the building blocks necessary for a modern state in the first part of the 20th century.
   
   However one of the explosive segments in this book is the part that exposes and gives British colonialist a real black eye, not because of their stinginess and selfishness, but because of their unabashed shamelessness of looting and stealing all the factories and machines and the modern equipment, including rail way wagons and wires that the Italians invested in Eritrea! Not only that, but the British also looted almost all the factories and machines that the Italians built in Ethiopia during its brief occupation of Ethiopia. That is, Ethiopia, the very country the British were supposed to be liberating!
   
   In light of these shocking facts about British proclivity for looting, stealing and pillaging, I was left wondering how many factories and machines and modern equipment the British forces looted from Southern Somalia when they defeated the Italians and occupied Southern Somalia in 1941?
   
   It is the exposure of these raw, unsanitized facts about the nature, greed and the attitudes of European colonialists that sets Michela Wrong apart from many western authors and scholars!
   
   My only wish is that she would, one day, be interested in the plight of the Somalis of Ogaden, who have been occupied, betrayed, and subjugated by none other than the very authors of Eritrea's horrendous history: the Italians, the British and the Abyssinians. Since she already extensively researched about history of both Eritrea and Ethiopia, writing about Ogaden which is still occupied by Ethiopia would be relatively easy.
   
   Alternatively, if I may digress, she could write about the cause of the Somali people in the horn of Africa. The Somalis have the misfortune of being the only people divided and dismembered into five limbs and each limb grabbed and swallowed by a different colonial master. And the tragic consequences of that dismemberment has been the complete collapse of the Somali Republic. Contrary to the popular notion, the principal factor responsible for the collapse of the Somali Republic in 1991 was the Ogaden war of 1977 and its consequences. The dictatorial rule of former President Siyad Barre, the epidemic of Qaat, and the curse of clanism were merely contribuiting factors. Theoratically, If Somalia stayed out of Ogaden, it could have remained peaceful, relatively prosperous, and strong. But Somalia could never have stayed out of Ogaden for very long. And if it didn't invade Ogaden in 1977, it could have invaded in 1987, or 1997, or 2027! And the reason is that the limbs of the same body tend to gravitate into the same direction! And every time Somalia mastered enough strength it will do everything in her power to regain its dismembered limbs, be it NFD or Ogaden. That is why the Horn of Africa will never see peace or stability so long the dismembered limbs of the Somali nation continue crying for one another.
   
   Certain peoples with numeric superiority such as Arabs, for instance, may withstand or whither division and dismemberment. However Somalia with a small country and smaller people cannot. As Farah Omaar, the well known Somali patriot said long ago, "My country is smaller than to be divided; my people are frailer than to be enslaved!"
   
   Now Somalia hit rock bottom. And because of its occupation of Ogaden and invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia is going to sink into a black hole! And Kenya will be next! And the vicious cycle for peoples of the Horn of Africa will continue unabated. Therefore for those who care about world peace, the most productive and cost-effective endeavor to restoring peace into this troubled region is to work for the reunification of the dismembered limbs of the Somali nation. But so long that objective is either neglected, ignored, or overlooked, the key to peace and stability in the Horn will be very difficult to locate.
   
   With her talent, courage, and honesty, Michela Wrong can take up this challenging issue, uncover the sad facts that the British and other western scholars have been sanitizing and glossing over for decades, and produce a groundbreaking must-read book for anyone interested in the Horn of Africa, and thereby not only make a significant contribution to enlightening people around the world, but also perhaps help finding a lasting solution for the never ending tragedy of the peoples of the Horn of Africa.
   
   To come back to this book, I Didn't Do It For You is impressive. And it is worth every penny and every minute of one's time.
   
   Mohamed Heebaan



3. What a book! Shall I call it a novel? For me it read like a suspensful novel rather than an ordinary narrative about an obscure Afrcan nation.I commend the young writer for her lucid style and insightful observation The narrative for the story takes place mainly in the Sahle Mountains and the main characters are the Eritrean fighters and the other charcters- the villains are the Ethiopian Army, the Italains, the British, the Russians, The Americans, last but not least the UN.Like in a good novel, at the end the protagonists- the heroes or the winners are the Eritreans



4. This book is as well-written and well-researched as Ms. Wrong's earlier book on the Congo ("In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz") if not better. It offers a rare glimpse into Italian colonialism. But this real-life story on the long fight for independence of a small developing nation and how it has coped with neo-colonialism, imperialism, multilateralism, dogmatism and superpower cynicism is painful to read, if only because the heroes of the book -the remarkably resourceful and resilient Eritrean people- are denied their happy end. Highly recommended.



5. Even in a continent full of doomed revolutions and post-colonial misery, the story of the plucky Eritreans is a fascinating and tragic one. As an experienced world news correspondent on Africa, Michela Wrong has the chops to give us an informative history of this tough and self-sufficient people who endured centuries of colonial exploitation and a 30-year struggle against their Ethiopian overlords, before finally becoming independent in 1993. The author does just that throughout most of the book, starting with a strong examination of the national character and unique cultural traits of the Eritreans, then later ending the book on a melancholy but instructive note as their inspiring struggle for self-determination went sour.
   
   The problem here though is with the middle sections of the book, which devolve into disconnected snippets and vignettes that highlight persons and events of interest but detract from the historical and political narrative. (This is the same problem that afflicts Wrong's other major book, the nearly-masterful Congo study "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz.") The worst example is a useless tangent in Chapter 10 into stories of debauchery by American servicemen in Eritrea in the 1960s. Also, Wrong has a hard time effectively separating the histories of Eritrea and Ethiopia, and while that's surely difficult with so much historical interaction between the peoples, the Eritreans are missing from large parts of this book that is supposed to be about them.
   
   Fortunately, Michela Wrong finishes strongly with useful examinations of the historical lessons to be learned from the long and still-ongoing struggle of the Eritreans. Based on the book's title, I'm not convinced that the world betrayed Eritrea, but the world certainly ignored that small nation's unique struggle through centuries of historical ignorance and political myopia. The hard-working Eritreans deserve the tribute delivered by Wrong in this book. [~doomsdayer520~]

No comments about Zanzibar, 6th: Pemba and Mafia (Bradt Travel Guide).