Rating: 
Summary: Spectacular adventure story
Review: Slavomir Rawicz was a young cavalry officer in the Polish Army at the outbreak of WWII. After Poland was divided among the Germans and Soviets, Rawicz was arrested and sentenced to hard labor in the Siberian gulag. The tales of the terrible journey to get to the gulag are epic in their own right. The overcrowded cattle car the Poles rode in (those in the center suffocated; those on the outside froze to death; all died standing up because they were packed in like sardines); being hitched to reindeer and dragged through a raging blizzard, where men who dropped were shot or left to die in the snow; then they had to build the camp once they arrived. Rawicz and some of his fellow prisoners, which include a mysterious American named Mr. Smith, decide to escape come summer. They develop an incredible plan to walk to British India. Once the time is right, they sneak out of the camp and begin a journey over thousands of miles. They encounter no real problems in Siberia, even picking up a runaway girl, but once they enter Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, it's a different story. They have no food, water, or map, and no knowledge of desert survival. They run across NO human beings during this time. They enter Tibet and find people, seemingly the friendliest people on earth despite the language barrier, and eventually cross the Himalayas, fighting cold, bottomless crevasses, and even a Yeti! (the most doubtful part of the book; this incident is also described as fact in Bernard Heuvelman's 'On the Track of Unknown Animals', the cryptozoology bible). True or not, this is all-in-all a great adventure read. I passed it around, and everyone I gave it to liked it.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable, unbelievable story
Review: Slavomir Rawicz's story of his World War II-era journey, first by cattle car and by foot to Siberia, then by foot from Siberia to India, puts to shame any notion that almost any experience in the Western world is difficult. To us, hard reality is forgetting to bring bottled water on a camping trip, or burning a souffle, or being stuck in traffic when picking up our kids. To Rawicz and his fellow escapees from a labor camp, hard reality included walking through driving snow wearing little more than sacks, walking through a desert for days on end without water or food, chasing snakes for food, climbing the Himilayas without any equipment or guides, drinking polluted water, and living in your own filth in a chimney-sized cell for a year. Rawicz's story is magical for the armchair adventurer, though it must have been unbearably brutal for those who lived it.Ghostwritten by a British journalist, THE LONG WALK at times reads as if an Englishman experienced the journey, though this only adds to its charm. I commend the Lyons Press for reviving this book, which I would not otherwise have found. Check out the other titles they've rereleased, especially David Howarth's THE SLEDGE PATROL, WE DIE ALONE, and THE SHETLAND BUS.
Rating: 
Summary: this is a work of fiction (its a fake)
Review: This book is total fiction. Nothing about the author's
life before he wrote the book or any detail of the journey
has ever been independently confirmed. And a great many
people have tried very hard to do so since the 1950s. Nothing
about his life can be confirmed before he arrived in england
and started telling his story. Many people have read this book and wanted to believe him. They
have tried to check out the story but most have ended up
totally frustrated by the author's lack of cooperation
if not outright dishonesty. It can't be confirmed that he
was ever a polish officer, that he was in the soviet union,
or that he was ever in India or palestine. "I dont remember"
will work for the details of his trip through China, but
"I dont remember" doesn't work when he says it with regard
to his entire life before the 1950s. Slavomir Rawicz is likely not even his real name. This isn't a conclusion that I'm happy to have come to, but
Mr. Rawicz has not ever been able to provide even one tiny
bit of supporting evidence for his account of his life
independent of the actual trip itself.
Rating:
Summary: A Story You'll Never Forget.
Review: Although The Long Walk is well written, that has nothing to do with why it's a good book. People should read this book because it chronicles perhaps the most extraordinary true story of human endurance in recorded history. Slavomir Rawicz is unjustly imprisoned by the Communist Russians early in World War II. He is confined to a cell so small that he literally cannot sit, but must sleep by collapsing with his knees against the wall and his feet steeped in his own waste. He is later transported to Siberia by train, and then marched through the cold countryside to a Soviet Gulag, witnessing the death by exposure and exhaustion of other unfortunate captives along the way. In the prison camp he is set in forced labor, kept in horrendous conditions, over-worked, and underfed. Near the end of his rope, Rawicz and a handful of companions orchestrate a daring and desperate escape, and then proceed to run for their lives, on foot, toward freedom in India--4,000 miles away. Then the fun begins. They must conquer the frozen Siberian tundra, the Gobi desert, the Himalayan Mountains, starvation, the Soviets, and their own inner demons. Slavomir's ordeal overshadows every other survival tale I've every read, including Admiral Scott's Polar expedition and Krakauer's Everest disaster. This is up there with the Donner Expedition in terms of grim conditions and the indomitable human spirit. Trust me. If you've got a teenager who's complaining because they think they have it rough, let 'em read this one. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible Journey; Entertaining Reading
Review: "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, Audio Version, Blackstone Audio Books, Ashland, Oregon, 1990. Read by Bernard Mayes. Eight 1-½ hour cassettes. This is a remarkable story of suffering, endurance, perseverance and loyalty. Slavomir Rawicz was a cavalry officer in the Polish Army when Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia divided Poland. Arrested by the Soviets in 1939, Rawicz was put on "trial" for espionage against the Soviet Union, mainly on the grounds that Rawicz spoke Russian. Why else would a Pole learn Russian ... obviously to spy! Convicted, he is sent to a labor camp in Siberia. Usually, this is enough for good story. The Polish cavalry officer, however, after enduring the hardships of walking, in a raging blizzard, from the railhead to the labor camp, decides to escape. With a little help from the wife of the Camp Commander, Rawicz escapes with six other prisoners, along with a makeshift knife and an ax head without a handle. They walk out of Siberia in the "warm" part of the year, meet a displaced Polish woman (almost a young girl) and include her in their plans. Their plans include walking along the side of the biggest lake in the world, crossing the Gobi dessert without a vessel to carry water, climbing through the Himalayas (without oxygen at heights where it was needed) and finally coming out in British India. The lone American (identified only as Mr. Smith) then uses his command of English to explain their great trek to the British Army. It is almost impossible to believe all the hardships they must endure. They survive the Gobi by eating large black snakes, and the butchering and cooking is described too graphically. They meet various native individuals, and are greeted courteously and sometimes charmingly, despite the lack, sometimes, of a language in common. The young girl dies in the Gobi. The Pole, who sang Christmas carols on Christmas Eve, falls to his death in the mountains. All the escapees lose much weight and they all grow beards and much hair, so that, when they are being medically treated in India, they are surprised to see what each other looks like. After hospitalization, Slavomir Rawicz arranges to be transferred to a Polish outfit fighting in Africa. The entire account is presented in a matter-of-fact fashion; the reader, Bernard Mayes echoes this by using uses a matter-of-fact , almost British accent, when he read the long book. The eight cassettes helped me as I sat in traffic on Interstate 495, the ring road around Boston.
Rating:
Summary: amazing walk to freedom (if true?)
Review: If you enjoyed Lansing's Endurance then this is almost a sure bet for you. But you should know before you buy, that this story may not be true. When the walkers see the Yetis in the Himalayan mountains, I was disapointed, up until then everything seemed so realistic. If you don't care if it is fact or fiction and just want read great survival story go ahead and buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Our children should read this book...
Review: This story of a young Polish officer, imprisoned and tortured by the Soviets, tells how he ultimately escapes across Asia to freedom. As writing, it is not outstanding. It is an unadorned narrative with very little retrospection or detail. The latter portion, the story of the trek to India, is amazing; an awe-inspiring monument to human courage, endurance, and will. It is the first part, however, the chilling account of his torture and interrogation, that makes the deepest mark on the reader. From page 1, I could feel the cold hopelessness of Lubyanka prison seeping from the pages into my fingers; I had to pause for a minute before I could go on. The contrast between the hospitality of Tibetan peasants the travellers meet, and the inhumanity of the Soviet torturers, underscores the point. The fact that the author does not preach a message, but simply recounts facts, makes our own conclusions that much more dreadful. People are out there doing these things all the time. It could happen to any of us, really, for no reason, no matter how secure you think you are. If we don't want others to suffer and have to endure the way that Slavomir Rawicz did, we must do whatever we can stop political imprisonment and torture. Hello, Amnesty International?
Rating:
Summary: AN ENDURING LESSON IN THE CLASS OF LIFE 101
Review: This emotionally riveting often poignant story recaps the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Polish officer Slavomir Rawicz by the Soviets after they annexed Poland during the WW II era. But wait, that is just the first chapter!! One year later, Rawicz and six other partners in crime escape from the oppressive Siberian labor camp where they were imprisoned (with help from a most surprising source). With a sentence of 25 year hanging over his head Rawicz figured he had nothing to lose. The escapees came from different ethnic backgrounds but were united in one common accord. Escape, The duty of every prisoner. They start out over the long trek across Siberia toward British controlled India. Along the way they endured starvation, sickness, exposure to freezing elements, the heat and thirst of the Gobi desert, and many other plights. Imagine crossing the Himalayas in the winter with no protective clothing and very little food and no way of melting snow for water. But through it all they never lost their desire for freedom. THEY WOULD RATHER HAD DIED IN THE WILDERNESS AS FREE MEN THAN LIVED AS PRISONERS OF AN EVIL EMPIRE CONVICTED OF CRIMES THEY NEVER COMMITTED. And as a teaser to get you to read the book I ask: And what about the Yeti? Did you believe it? I don't give a lot of 5 star ratings but this one is well earned.
Rating:
Summary: Reading this made me feel as though I had no problems
Review: A friend that we highly admire recommended this book to my husband and I. Although we read it years ago now, we still frequently mention it when one of us is grumbling about a problem and we brighten up and laugh. This survival story is truly amazing.
Rating:
Summary: it WAS a LOOOONG walk!
Review: amazing..... but the book bogged down so much in the middle.... probably like the journey tho!
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