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Women's Fiction
The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $10.17
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Let me suggest......
Review: It's a great read, a truly inspirational book. But,there seems to be some doubt whether or not the book is true. May I suggest one compares this narrative to the memoirs of those who retreated from Moscow with Napoleon, an extremely well documented fact. Clearly the tone is the same between the the 1812 narratives and the Long Walk: matter of fact recolections of horror and sorrow. Then there are the practical details of survival,from the making of shoes to the scrounging of food. These also match up well with the Napoleonic memoires. Both grant that luck played a major part, and the comparisons can go on and on. And lastly the failure to seem totaly accurate to the reader. As every story teller knows: it gets a little better every time you tell it. Then there is the fact that years, pain, and grief all affect memory. Lastly there is the fact that by their very success these writers are capable of super human efforts. If they weren't these books never would have been written.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 12 months of guts - and that's only after the escape!
Review: Being captured by the Russians, spending several months in a prison cell, facing a lot of interrogation - and then when you think the worst is over - being sent to a labour camp in Siberia - first by train and then by foot. Can it get worse?
It can. If you escape from Siberia, in order to reach the civilization, you must first face 12 months of bitter cold, dry desert, high mountains - sometimes being without water for 10 days.
A highly entertaining and interesting book - if you buy it, prepare for several hours of non-stop reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Fabulous Read!
Review: This book is a real page-turner. The author seems very credible to me in spite of how incredible some of his adventures were. I'm ordering several copies as Christmas gifts.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: HOGWASH
Review: TOTAL HOGWASH, A FAIRY TALE IF I'VE EVER READ ONE. IT SHOULD HAVE STARTED OUT 'ONCE UPON A TIME.' I DO NOT MIND READING A GOOD YARN BUT THIS ONE TRIES TO SELL ITSELF AS A TRUE ACCOUNT. READERS ARE NOT THAT GULLIBLE. I RATE IT FOUR STARS FOR THE STORY BUT TAKE AWAY THREE FOR SAYING IT'S A TRUE STORY.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best books ever
Review: There may be people who find the narrative unbelievable. Regarding such people, one is minded of the definition of a cynic as one who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
The book is an inherently believable narrative of one who was willing, with his companions, to risk all for freedom. So was the girl they met. That part of the tale will make you weep, as when the men gave her a flower for her hair. It should not surprise anyone that the girl was not raped, since, by way of background, she was one with the men.
It becomes a tragedy beyond words when the girl, and one of the men, die in the Gobi Desert, but the party perseveres, just as when people died on the Oregon Trail, and in first crossing Death Valley. These two episodes also seem unbelievable, but they occurred, thus refuting the mean-spirited.
Two more of the men die while crossing Central Asia and the Himalayas. But four of the original seven make it to India.
Far from being a contrived fiction, the book appears to this writer to reflect a triumph of the human spirit. It is also offers keen insight into the difference between "civilization" and the inherent decency of man to his fellows. The book will make you swell with pride, bring tears to your eyes , and cause you reflect deeply and repeatedly, but you will never forget it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Interesting, but is this a real story or a good con...
Review: I think there is something of a credibility problem. For instance, going for days without water in the Gobi desert isn't supposed to be physically possible. At least it wasn't when I went thru survival school. Maybe it could happen but just too many amazing feats of endurance for me. As fiction, it's a fair read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A tribute to inner strength
Review: The Long Walk is an awe inspiring story of seven men who risked everything in escaping from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia and ultimately ended up some 4000 miles south in British India after having endured the snow of Siberia, the heat and sand of the Gobi desert and the frozen mountains of the Himilayas.

This story is so frightening in the disregard for human life demonstrated by the Soviets while at the same time amazingly inspirational in the kindness of strangers. For over a year these men traveled on foot and if not for the overwhelming generosity of all of those they encountered on their journey somehow managed to survive a brutal journey. As one of the men himself so eloquently put it, "They do a lot to wipe out bitter memories of other people who have lost their respect for humanity."

I could hardly put this book down and have no doubt this occured as Slavomir recollects and am astonished that some would be naive enough to claim it was fabricated.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: awesome book
Review: a good book especially if you like a true story with an incredible adventure. Its pages are addictive and easy flowing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Yarn of Mythic Proportions
Review: First, this book is a real page turner, and I rate it very high for sheer entertainment value. I wish there were more novels written with the same passion, tension and spirit.

Now to the burning question -- is it a true story or not. My conclusion is that it doesn't really matter. This is one of a legion of post-war memoirs that at best stretch the truth and at worst are out-and-out fabrications. This has been true from The Iliad to All Quiet on the Western Front; from Thucydides through Norman Schwarzkopf's memoirs. I chalk this one up to myth -- myth being defined as "something that never was true but always will be." Tell yourself that this book is a "true" and gripping depiction of the indominatability of the human spirit and don't sweat the rest.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A long walk indeed
Review: I heard about this book way back in the 1970s...I didn't know the title or the author...I finally stumbled upon an original hardback copy in the Ft Dix Army Library...an incredible adventure....kind of cryptic in style (very common for some translated books) but I rate it 5 stars just for the sheer magnitude of the journey.....a rewrite of this book with expanded sections,maps, diagrams and descriptions of the flora and fauna of the route of the trek would be fascninating....also I recommend consulting a very good map when reading the book to thoroughly gain an appreciation of the task undertaken by these men and lady.....properly done...this would make one heck of a movie...which would make "Castaway" look like a vacation at Club Med...I would rank this journey on par with Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914...a fiction book entitled "the Long March" captures a trek of Polish prisoners from a Soviet-run Gulag...also an excellent read


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