Rating: 
Summary: Langewiesche's Sahara Is Arid Garden Of Riches
Review: Travel books can be a mixed bag, with the narrators themselves sometimes making for unpleasant company on the armchair journey. That is not a problem with "Sahara Unveiled," where author William Langewiesche submerges himself well beneath the thread of the story.Langewiesche, a reporter for "Atlantic Monthly" best known today for his "American Ground" series of pieces on the aftermath of the World Trade Center's destruction, writes in a lean, spare, slightly alkaline style reminiscent of Hemingway that seems to suit his subject, the world's biggest and perhaps most ferocious desert, quite well. It puts one in mind of William Least Heat Moon's travel writing, notably "Blue Highways," with its cultural detours and picaresque, ever-changing cast of characters. Langewiesche starts off by quickly dispelling any myths his readers might have about the subject of the Sahara: "Do not regret the passing of the camel and the caravan. The Sahara has changed, but it remains a desert without compromise, the world in its extreme." He goes on to demonstrate this by trekking through the desert's endless mass and then west to the Atlantic primarily by taxi, bus, and riverboat. It's not clear to me why Langewiesche was doing this (Least Heat Moon had similarly opaque motives), and the locals have questions, too. During one layover in the Algerian town of M'Zab, what he calls "the diving board for the deep Sahara," there is the following exchange as Langewiesche looks for ground transport farther south: "He said: 'Why don't you fly?' 'Because I want to see the desert up close.' 'Buy a postcard.' 'But I want to feel the desert.' 'It feels bad.' Indeed it does. Sometimes it can even be fatal. Death, human and otherwise, is of no importance to the Sahara, devourer of whole towns and caravans. "The Sahara is not cruel, but it is indifferent," he writes. And it produces a sometimes indifferent people, hard, lean, and fatalistic. People who attack Langewiesche for a lack of political correctness in depicting the Arabs, Berbers, Tauregs, Moors, and others he describes in these pages pay a glowing tribute without knowing it. Langewiesche is one tough writer, unsentimental, not macho but not running for office, either. When he has cause to describe the generosity and kindness of people he meets, he does so. When he runs into less decent folk, he doesn't mince words. He doesn't waste them, either, on emotional outbursts or self-righteousness. As I said at the beginning, he's one author who doesn't get in the way of what he's talking about. His take on the Europeans who come to the Sahara are sharp and cutting. He notes meeting a miserable French couple collecting scorpions and tales of injured superiority in Algeria, a former French colony: "She was a Parisian, and too young to remember the old Algerian war. But she had picked up the old colonial habit of talking about the Algerians as if they were not present or didn't understand French. Similarly, she wore a short skirt and a sleeveless shirt, and through the thin fabric displayed her nipples in disregard of local sentiment. And now she sat drinking French wine. These were not acts of indifference, but aggression. And Algerians understood the difference." The best thing about "Sahara Unveiled" is it never sits still for long. Langewiesche can spend a few pages talking about the fate of a misguided missionary in the 1800s, then bring things back to the present day with an analysis of Taureg separatist violence. He analyzes the different types of dunes formed by Saharan sand, how the desert resembles an ocean, and how it does not. He relates folk tales and the anatomy of a camel. Using plainspoken and approachable prose, he manages to take deep stock of a variety of subjects, make his point, and move on. The last leg of the journey is a quick one, perhaps because Langewiesche was taken ill (from drinking the water, a classic tourist mistake). He doesn't wrap it up as well as he should have, but the rest of the book is too good to begrudge him anything for that. Complaining the author left you wanting more is not much of a complaint, is it? You will enjoy this account of nature at its extreme, and the people who live in it. It is an armchair journey worth taking.
Rating:
Summary: Demythologizing the Desert
Review: Very, very good book about author's 1990(?) trip from Algiers south through the Sahara desert into Niger, Mali and Senegal. He has apparently spent a fair amount of time in Algeria and had been to much of the Algerian desert prior to the trip he recounts in this book (actually, many of the anecdotes he tells are from previous trips). He nicely mixes in digressions on science (physics of sand dunes, ecology of scorpions, desertification) with his history and sociology. Langewiesche seems particularly keen to de-romanticize the Sahara, and spends a great deal of time chiding the French for doing so. A nice travel book which captures the terror of the desert quite well. I recommend not reading on once he exits the Algerian desert. He speeds through the final portion of the trip and has taken to heart the writer's adage that no ending is better than a bad ending!
Rating:
Summary: A Lush Account of an Arid Subject
Review: What a fabulous book. This one is destined to become a travel classic along with the best of fellow pilot Saint-Exupery. Having lived in West Africa, I was on the look-out for a false step, or glibness, and never found it. Langewiesche considers his subjects with fairness and a keen eye. He never condescends. He caught the mood of the desert beautifully without ever romanticizing or demonizing it. What a coup. I have been able to talk about nothing but this book for the past week and am forcing it on every literate person I know. But hey - a book this good is an easy sell.
Rating:
Summary: A Lush Account of an Arid Subject
Review: What a fabulous book. This one is destined to become a travel classic along with the best of fellow pilot Saint-Exupery. Having lived in West Africa, I was on the look-out for a false step, or glibness, and never found it. Langewiesche considers his subjects with fairness and a keen eye. He never condescends. He caught the mood of the desert beautifully without ever romanticizing or demonizing it. What a coup. I have been able to talk about nothing but this book for the past week and am forcing it on every literate person I know. But hey - a book this good is an easy sell.
| 
