<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: What a great book!
Review: I finished reading Owen Lattimore's The Desert Road to Turkestan yesterday, and rarely have I been so completely, thoroughly and delightedly sandbagged by a book. I spent all day in bed absorbed in Lattimore's travels with a Chinese camel caravan through Western China and the Gobi desert in 1926-7. This definitely qualifies as a first-rate example of the "Are You Out of Your Mind!" travel book genre. It's even better than The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On top of that, Lattimore was one of the 20th centuries finest Asian Scholars. Buy, Read, Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: What a great book!
Review: I finished reading Owen Lattimore's The Desert Road to Turkestan yesterday, and rarely have I been so completely, thoroughly and delightedly sandbagged by a book. I spent all day in bed absorbed in Lattimore's travels with a Chinese camel caravan through Western China and the Gobi desert in 1926-7. This definitely qualifies as a first-rate example of the "Are You Out of Your Mind!" travel book genre. It's even better than The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On top of that, Lattimore was one of the 20th centuries finest Asian Scholars. Buy, Read, Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Three attempts and still at page three
Review: I got to page three on three occasions and it's now collecting dust. Owen Lattimore may have been a explorer and a beacon for sensible China research during the US witch hunt days, but this isn't gripping travel writing. Maybe it's the fact that he uses old fashioned transliteration of Chinese names, I don't know, but I just couldn't get into it. I'll definitely try again, another time. First hand accounts from explorers heading off into the wild blue yonder are normally hard to put down. If ony Lattimore could write like Great Game guru Peter Hopkirk. What a shame.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best accounts of travel in China ever written
Review: This is an account of a journey across the Gobi Desert by camel in the early part of the 20th century at a time when central government control was fragmentary at best--a time of warlords, bandits, and the rapid decline of a great number of traditional practices in China. The author, a fluent Chinese speaker, sometime journalist, and wool trader for a company in Tianjin, hired camels to join one of the last of the trading caravans travelling between Xinjiang an what is now Inner Mongolia. From observations of the manners and customs of the caravans, through details of language, to descriptions of the various hazards of the journey, Lattimore (an American who was later persecuted in the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 60s for his knowledge of China) is both perceptive and witty, and his book is infused with a sympathy for the people and their soon-to-vanish way of life. This charming, amusing, and intelligent book is one of the best travel books on China ever written, several leagues above most modern accounts, and is likely to remain in print for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best accounts of travel in China ever written
Review: This is an account of a journey across the Gobi Desert by camel in the early part of the 20th century at a time when central government control was fragmentary at best--a time of warlords, bandits, and the rapid decline of a great number of traditional practices in China. The author, a fluent Chinese speaker, sometime journalist, and wool trader for a company in Tianjin, hired camels to join one of the last of the trading caravans travelling between Xinjiang an what is now Inner Mongolia. From observations of the manners and customs of the caravans, through details of language, to descriptions of the various hazards of the journey, Lattimore (an American who was later persecuted in the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 60s for his knowledge of China) is both perceptive and witty, and his book is infused with a sympathy for the people and their soon-to-vanish way of life. This charming, amusing, and intelligent book is one of the best travel books on China ever written, several leagues above most modern accounts, and is likely to remain in print for a long time to come.
<< 1 >>
| 
