The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK THAT REVEALS A FACINATING MAN HERETOFORE HIDDEN
Review: This was a sorely needed book and I am glad it is in print. My compliments to the author. His finding the lost manuscript itself should be lauded as a vital contribution to world history. Ever since I read "Beyond the Kyber Pass" written by John Waller in 1990 (a good book!) I have been facinated by Josiah Harlan. Waller in his book gives highly illustrative glimpses of this enigmatic figure and I was for years trying to find more material written by or on Josiah Harlan. I went online and found first editions (there were no second editions) of Harlan's one and only work offered for around a thousand dollars! Even later works based on his other writings were fetching tidy sums. I recomend this book highly. If you are fond of Victorian travel literature, facinated by "The Great Game", or love to read real life adventure stories I endorse this book in the most positive terms.

Rating:
Summary: visionary and important
Review: To many readers this will seem to be another poor rip roaring adventure. The hero is a beguiling cad. His adventures are scarcely believable. From England to India and thence to Afghanistan he laughs, cheats, lies and womanises with gay abandon in the era before gay meant something other than care-free. He is a champion boxer, an accomplished dentist and pianist and yet in a sublime twist he is none of these things. To today's audience he could seem a scoundrel without merit.I contest there is more to this book than a clumsily written and entertaining romp in the tradition of Tom Jones. I argue Mr Macintyre is using the story of Josiah Harlin to argue FOR American intervention in Afghanistan and latterly Iraq. Ultimately Harlin failed in his role as a bogus king but not for the want of trying. Had he been more genuine in his claims he might have succeeded. Today America has taken it upon itself to enter the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, just as Harlin tried to do. We must pray for all the sakes of Humanity America has more luck. As a book this is poorly phrased in parts and relies on copying from Harlin's journal. Where it succeeds is not in the far fetched and poor story-telling but its vision about America. For that we must thank Mr Macintyre, a writer of near genius. For that alone I award this magnificent book the full score of five stars. I have never done that before in my many acclaimed reviews.

Rating:
Summary: good
Review: Unlike some readers I am not wholly in favour of Amnerican intervention in the near and middle east. to me, i say the americans are faling into the same trap as the british did many decades ago. such regions are by habit independent in spirit and do not take kindly to foreign interlopers however well intentioned. be that as it might mr macintyre's book is amusing and fun. those wanting geo-political-socio truths should look elsewhere. as summer nears and we turn our thoughts to lazy days on far flung beaches this is a book to pack into our luggage! not me as i prefer heavyweight reading on my holidays. many do not and for them i recommend this book. on a note of caution i am puzzled by mention by a satisfied reader of the european union. i could find no such argument in my edition.

Rating:
Summary: America's First Afghanistan Episode
Review: Whatever else we must blame them for, Al Queda and the Taliban can be thanked for bringing back to our memories a forgotten American, the first American who was ever in Afghanistan. Josiah Harlan, born in 1799, was barely remembered as a footnote from the First Afghan War, and understandably was snubbed by the British historians of that conflict. Reporter Ben Macintyre, researching the history of the area in order to cover its current events, found references to Harlan and became intrigued. He hunted for Harlan clues in Afghanistan itself, and was led to a tiny local museum in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He came upon what other biographers can only dream of getting: a previously unknown autobiography handwritten by the subject. There was also an ancient proclamation making Harlan absolute ruler of a principality in Afghanistan. Indeed, Harlan inspired a Kipling story, which in turn brought the wonderful John Huston film, and which has now given Macintyre's book its title: _The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). His life is as surprising and exciting as the fictions it inspired.

Harlan first sailed to Calcutta and Canton in a commercial venture in 1820. On a subsequent voyage, while he was in Calcutta, he learned that his fiancée back home in Philadelphia had married another. Emotionally adrift, hearing that the British were about to go to war against Burma, he signed on as a surgeon to the East India Company. Macintyre writes, "That he had never actually studied medicine was not, at least in his own mind, an impediment." His service over, he signed on with an exiled king to lead an army to reclaim Afghanistan, but he had plenty of intrigues and shifts of alliances before that could happen. Eventually he would meet up with the Hazara tribe, which in turn wanted him to create their own invincible military. Of course, he had a price; the prince "transferred his principality to me in feudal service, binding himself and his tribe to pay tribute forever." Harlan had indeed become a king. He also imagined himself a sort of reincarnated Alexander the Conqueror, following Alexander's trails. He even took on his conquests an elephant, the symbol and mascot of the Macedonian conqueror, but it could eventually take no more of the mountain cold. Harlan took comfort in that having to send back the elephant, he was once again emulating Alexander, who had had to leave his own elephant troops behind for the same reason.

Harlan's enterprising assumption of command and kingdom was only put to an end by the Great Game between Britain and Russia in their struggle over the area. He tried to play along, with the plots and shifting alliances that he used for all his fifteen years in the region, but eventually the British booted him out, or in his version, he was disgusted by how the British treated the Afghan natives and sent himself home. He remained active, and was on hand to advise the American government in 1854 about the feasibility of the introduction of camels into the west. Harlan admired the beasts, and it is safe to say that no American knew more about them, but he did not take into account that American horses, not raised with camels, would be unmanageable around them and that cattle would stampede when they saw them. He also tried to become the government advisor on the introduction of Afghan grapes into America; he adored the produce of the region, but any plans of return to the area for agricultural efforts were cut short by the Civil War. Always horrified by slavery, he raised a Union regiment, but he was used to dealing with military underlings in the way an oriental prince would. This led to a messy court-martial, but the aging Harlan ended his service due to medical problems. He wound up in San Francisco, working as a doctor, dying of tuberculosis in 1871. He was essentially forgotten. His rediscovery, in this fast-moving and entertaining biography, is now especially welcome as a timely illumination into the beginnings of dealings between the mysterious Afghanistan and the U.S.

Rating:
Summary: America's First Afghanistan Episode
Review: Whatever else we must blame them for, Al Queda and the Taliban can be thanked for bringing back to our memories a forgotten American, the first American who was ever in Afghanistan. Josiah Harlan, born in 1799, was barely remembered as a footnote from the First Afghan War, and understandably was snubbed by the British historians of that conflict. Reporter Ben Macintyre, researching the history of the area in order to cover its current events, found references to Harlan and became intrigued. He hunted for Harlan clues in Afghanistan itself, and was led to a tiny local museum in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He came upon what other biographers can only dream of getting: a previously unknown autobiography handwritten by the subject. There was also an ancient proclamation making Harlan absolute ruler of a principality in Afghanistan. Indeed, Harlan inspired a Kipling story, which in turn brought the wonderful John Huston film, and which has now given Macintyre's book its title: _The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). His life is as surprising and exciting as the fictions it inspired.

Harlan first sailed to Calcutta and Canton in a commercial venture in 1820. On a subsequent voyage, while he was in Calcutta, he learned that his fiancée back home in Philadelphia had married another. Emotionally adrift, hearing that the British were about to go to war against Burma, he signed on as a surgeon to the East India Company. Macintyre writes, "That he had never actually studied medicine was not, at least in his own mind, an impediment." His service over, he signed on with an exiled king to lead an army to reclaim Afghanistan, but he had plenty of intrigues and shifts of alliances before that could happen. Eventually he would meet up with the Hazara tribe, which in turn wanted him to create their own invincible military. Of course, he had a price; the prince "transferred his principality to me in feudal service, binding himself and his tribe to pay tribute forever." Harlan had indeed become a king. He also imagined himself a sort of reincarnated Alexander the Conqueror, following Alexander's trails. He even took on his conquests an elephant, the symbol and mascot of the Macedonian conqueror, but it could eventually take no more of the mountain cold. Harlan took comfort in that having to send back the elephant, he was once again emulating Alexander, who had had to leave his own elephant troops behind for the same reason.

Harlan's enterprising assumption of command and kingdom was only put to an end by the Great Game between Britain and Russia in their struggle over the area. He tried to play along, with the plots and shifting alliances that he used for all his fifteen years in the region, but eventually the British booted him out, or in his version, he was disgusted by how the British treated the Afghan natives and sent himself home. He remained active, and was on hand to advise the American government in 1854 about the feasibility of the introduction of camels into the west. Harlan admired the beasts, and it is safe to say that no American knew more about them, but he did not take into account that American horses, not raised with camels, would be unmanageable around them and that cattle would stampede when they saw them. He also tried to become the government advisor on the introduction of Afghan grapes into America; he adored the produce of the region, but any plans of return to the area for agricultural efforts were cut short by the Civil War. Always horrified by slavery, he raised a Union regiment, but he was used to dealing with military underlings in the way an oriental prince would. This led to a messy court-martial, but the aging Harlan ended his service due to medical problems. He wound up in San Francisco, working as a doctor, dying of tuberculosis in 1871. He was essentially forgotten. His rediscovery, in this fast-moving and entertaining biography, is now especially welcome as a timely illumination into the beginnings of dealings between the mysterious Afghanistan and the U.S.

Rating:
Summary: Another Afghan Disappointment
Review: Yet another book about the "Great Game" that isn't great, and has no game. No sense of person, place, or time can wriggle past the stifling ooze -- consisting of equal parts journalistic drone, hoary cliche, and predictable modifiers -- that lies, awaiting unsuspecting readers, between the covers of this tome. MacIntyre deserves to be applauded for his research; he should have hired someone else to do the writing. Here again we have a fascinating subject rendered lifeless by low-level prose. You want to know about this stuff? Read Kipling. He, at least, was not guilty of adverb abuse.

Rating:
Summary: Another Afghan Disappointment
Review: Yet another book about the "Great Game" that isn't great, and has no game. No sense of person, place, or time can wriggle past the stifling ooze -- consisting of equal parts journalistic drone, hoary cliche, and predictable modifiers -- that lies, awaiting unsuspecting readers, between the covers of this tome. MacIntyre deserves to be applauded for his research; he should have hired someone else to do the writing. Here again we have a fascinating subject rendered lifeless by low-level prose. You want to know about this stuff? Read Kipling. He, at least, was not guilty of adverb abuse.