The Lunatic Express

Author: Charles Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1784972711
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 910

Book Description
In 1895, George Whitehouse arrived at the east African post of Mombasa to perform an engineering miracle: the building of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway – a 600-mile route that was largely unmapped and barely explored. Behind Mombasa lay a scorched, waterless desert. Beyond, a horizonless scrub country climbed toward a jagged volcanic region bisected by the Great Rift Valley. A hundred miles of sponge-like quagmire marked the railway's last lap. The entire right of way bristled with hostile tribes, teemed with lions and breathed malaria. What was the purpose of this 'giant folly' and whom would it benefit? Was it to exploit the rumoured wealth of little-known central African kingdoms? Was it to destroy the slave trade? To encourage commerce and settlement? THE LUNATIC EXPRESS explores the building of this great railway in an earlier Africa of slave and ivory empires, of tribal monarchs and the vast lands that they ruled. Above all, it is the story of the white intruders whose combination of avarice, honour and tenacious courage made them a breed apart.

The Lunatic Express

Author: Carl Hoffman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767929810
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs. Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains. The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways. Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track. Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year. On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound. The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go. But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be—a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population. More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.

Dance of the Jakaranda

Author: Peter Kimani
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617755036
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
“This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation. The novel traces the lives and loves of three men—preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim—whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson Rajan—who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction—accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past. With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa. “Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.” —The Gazette “A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Kimani’s novel has an impressive breadth and scope.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.” —Publishers Weekly “Lyrical and powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews

McCain's Promise

Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316040940
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 77

Book Description
Is John McCain "For Real?" That's the question David Foster Wallace set out to explore when he first climbed aboard Senator McCain's campaign caravan in February 2000. It was a moment when Mccain was increasingly perceived as a harbinger of change, the anticandidate whose goal was "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest." And many young Americans were beginning to take notice. To get at "something riveting and unspinnable and true" about John Mccain, Wallace finds he must pierce the smoke screen of spin doctors and media manipulators. And he succeeds-in a characteristically potent blast of journalistic brio that not only captures the lunatic rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign but also delivers a compelling inquiry into John McCain himself: the senator, the POW, the campaign finance reformer, the candidate, the man.

The Last Wild Men of Borneo

Author: Carl Hoffman
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062439049
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
A 2019 EDGAR AWARDS NOMINEE (BEST FACT CRIME) • A BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK AWARDS FINALIST Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary “Wild Men of Borneo.” One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times bestselling author Carl Hoffman journeyed to find the truth, discovering that nothing is as it seems in the world’s last Eden, where the lines between sinner and saint blur into one. In 1984, Swiss traveler Bruno Manser joined an expedition to the Mulu caves on Borneo, the planet’s third largest island. There he slipped into the forest interior to make contact with the Penan, an indigenous tribe of peace-loving nomads living among the Dayak people, the fabled “Headhunters of Borneo.” Bruno lived for years with the Penan, gaining acceptance as a member of the tribe. However, when commercial logging began devouring the Penan’s homeland, Bruno led the tribe against these outside forces, earning him status as an enemy of the state, but also worldwide fame as an environmental hero. He escaped captivity under gunfire twice, but the strain took a psychological toll. Then, in 2000, Bruno disappeared without a trace. Had he become a madman, a hermit, or a martyr? American Michael Palmieri is, in many ways, Bruno’s opposite. Evading the Vietnam War, the Californian wandered the world, finally settling in Bali in the 1970s. From there, he staged expeditions into the Bornean jungle to acquire astonishing art and artifacts from the Dayaks. He would become one of the world’s most successful tribal-art field collectors, supplying sacred works to prestigious museums and wealthy private collectors. And yet suspicion shadowed this self-styled buccaneer who made his living extracting the treasure of the Dayak: Was he preserving or exploiting native culture? As Carl Hoffman unravels the deepening riddle of Bruno’s disappearance and seeks answers to the questions surrounding both men, it becomes clear saint and sinner are not so easily defined and Michael and Bruno are, in a sense, two parts of one whole: each spent his life in pursuit of the sacred fire of indigenous people. The Last Wild Men of Borneo is the product of Hoffman’s extensive travels to the region, guided by Penan through jungle paths traveled by Bruno and by Palmieri himself up rivers to remote villages. Hoffman also draws on exclusive interviews with Manser’s family and colleagues, and rare access to his letters and journals. Here is a peerless adventure propelled by the entwined lives of two singular, enigmatic men whose stories reveal both the grandeur and the precarious fate of the wildest place on earth.

Liar's Circus

Author: Carl Hoffman
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063009781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
"A brilliant, riveting, funny, terrifying journey into the beating heart of Trumpland." —Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls In this daring work of immersive journalism, based on hundreds of hours of reporting, Carl Hoffman journeys deep inside Donald Trump’s rallies, seeking to understand the strange and powerful tribe that forms the president’s base. Hoffman, who has written about the most dangerous and remote corners of the world, pierced this alternate society, welcomed in and initiated into its rites and upside-down beliefs, and finally ushered to its inner sanctum. Equally freewheeling and profound, Liar’s Circus tracks the MAGA faithful across five thousand miles of the American heartland during a crucial arc of the Trump presidency stretching from the impeachment saga to the dawn of the coronavirus pandemic that ended the rallies as we know it. Trump’s rallies are a singular and defining force in American history—a kind of Rosetta stone to understanding the Age of Trump. Yet while much remarked upon, they are, in fact, little examined, with the focus almost always on Trump’s latest outrageous statement. But who are the tens of thousands of people who fill these arenas? What do they see in Trump? And what curious alchemy—between president and adoring crowd—happens there that might explain Trump’s rise and powerful hold over both his base and the GOP? To those on the left, the rallies are a Black Mass of American politics at which Trump plays high priest, recklessly summoning the darkest forces within the nation. To the MAGA faithful, the rallies are a form of pilgrimage, a joyous ceremony that like all rituals binds people together and makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. Both sides would acknowledge that this traveling roadshow is the pressurized, combustible core of Trump’s political power, a meeting of the faithful where Trump is unshackled and his rhetoric reaches its most extreme, with downstream consequences for the rest of the nation. To date, no reporter has sought to understand the rallies as a sociological phenomenon examined from the bottom up. Hoffman has done just this. He has stood in line for more than 170 hours with Trump's most ardent superfans and joined them at the very front row; he has traveled from Minnesota to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Hampshire immersing himself in their culture. Liar’s Circus is a revelatory portrait of Trump’s America, from one of our most intrepid journalists.

Beyond Mombasa

Author: Frank Coates
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 073044497X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description
An impossible dream ... and a love to defy the odds. In 1897 Ronald Preston attempts the seemingly impossible - building a railway line from exotic Mombasa, on the east coast of Africa, to Lake Victoria, deep in the continent's wild and dark heart. His new bride, Florence, insists upon joining him. Yet ahead lie hostile tribes, dense jungles, floods, drought, man-eating lions, political intrigue, disease ... and somewhere within their crew stalks a silent menace. Ronald and Florence defy the odds and the conventions of their time to accomplish what the world said could not be done. Based on a true story, BEYOND MOMBASA takes the reader on a heart-stopping adventure across Africa - a land where man is pitted against not only nature, but against himself ... 'blockbuster adventure with authenticity' WEEKEND AUStRALIAN

Ready to Burst

Author: Franketienne
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 1935744798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Ready to Burst follows the lives of two young men and their individual attempts to make sense of the deeply troubled society surrounding them. An informed critique of the “brain drain” prompted by the Duvalier dictatorship, Ready to Burst is, in Frankétienne’s words, a portrait of “the extreme bitterness of doom in the face of the blind machinery of power.” Widely recognized as Haiti’s most important literary figure and an outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. The New York Times has called Frankétienne “the Father of Haitian Letters.”

Khyber, British India's North West Frontier

Author: Charles Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
The Author Takes The Rader With Him From The First Tentative Approach By The British, Their Embroilment With Pathans And Afridis. Upto The Present When Kabul And Peshwar Seem To Entice The Adventurous Tourists.

Technology, Violence, and War

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004393307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Book Description
This volume explores the importance of technology in war, and to the study of warfare. Dr. Guilmartin’s former students explore how technology from the medieval to the modern era, and across several continents, was integral to warfare and to the outcomes of wars. Authors discuss the interactions between politics, grand strategy, war, technology, and the socio-cultural implementation of new technologies in different contexts. They explore how and why belligerents chose to employ new technologies, the intended and unintended consequences of doing so, the feedback loops driving these consequences, and how the warring powers came to grips with the new technologies they unleashed. This work is particularly useful for military historians, military professionals, and policymakers who study and face analogous situations. Contributors are Alan Beyerchen, Robert H. Clemm, Edward Coss, Sebastian Cox, Daniel P. M. Curzon, Sarah K. Douglas, Robert S. Ehlers, Jr., Andrew de la Garza, John F. Guilmartin, Jr., Matthew Hurley, Peter Mansoor, Edward B. McCaul, Jr., Michael Pavelec, William Roberts, Robyn Rodriguez, Clifford J. Rogers, William Waddell, and Corbin Williamson.