Not just for the armchair traveler, this book would serve as a useful guide for those interested in exploring Mali.
A journey through some of the least traveled sections of Africa.
When Antonson (Route 66 Still Kicks, 2012) had a month free from work, he decided to travel alone to the remotest place he could think of: Timbuktu. The source of legends, Timbuktu is in the heart of Mali, a region not easily traversed by the Western traveler—only 1,000 people a year visit the city—and it’s this remoteness that inspired the author. Some of the strongest moments of the book occur early on, when Antonson chronicles his ride on a “ghost train” across Mali. He offers cringe-worthy descriptions of the filth and tight quarters of the train and colorful portraits of the boisterous villages at which they stopped. Most movingly, he shows the trust and friendships that developed between him and his roommates. Once off the train, Antonson made his way to Timbuktu to attend a world music festival, then spent a single, anticlimactic day in the city itself. Here, he learned of the thousands of ancient manuscripts in need of saving, a cause he later took up upon returning home. The author intersperses historical details of the region and fascinating portraits of previous Western explorers. In the last third of the book, Antonson recounts his walking trek through the Dogon region with an amiable guide. At times, there’s an aloofness to the author’s interactions with the Africans he meets. He seems most concerned with whether they would help him with his travel plans and appears overly insistent on getting his way. He spends quite a few pages on Mohammed, his swindling tour guide, who, while intended to seem devious, actually comes across as quite comic. The book was originally published in 2008, and this second edition includes an afterword by the author about the recent violence in Mali and the threat to Timbuktu.
Not just for the armchair traveler, this book would serve as a useful guide for those interested in exploring Mali.Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-567-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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