Wild East: the New Mongolia (Summersdale Travel)

Rating:
Summary: cracking good read
Review: I found Jill Lawless' Wild East to be an unusual work of travel writing. She did not just make a pit stop in Mongolia, but lived there for two years as editor of the UB Post newspaper -- a feisty English language newspaper. This is a work in the tradition of the great engaged journalists, a ballsy (without the balls) Hemmingway for the 21st century. Her writing is wise, minus the naive first impressions of many travellers -- it is Mongolia from the inside. Wild East is a reality check on current debates over globalization. Mongolia is a country where even McDonalds dares to not go. Lawless digs deep into the country's own version of the 60s, as Mongolian's lustily embraced there new-found freedoms in the 90s. She takes us across the country, from the remote Gobi desert, to border clashes with Russian Tuva. She is especially good at covering the dynamic and chaotic world of Mongolian tabloid newspapers, including the rise and fall of "Hot Blanket" magazine.