The Lunatic Express

Author : Carl Hoffman
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767929810
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lunatic Express written by Carl Hoffman and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs. Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains. The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways. Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track. Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year. On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound. The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go. But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be—a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population. More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.

Author : Charles Miller
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1784977381
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lunatic Express written by Charles Miller and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1895, George Whitehouse arrived at the east African post of Mombasa to perform an engineering miracle: the building of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway – a 600-mile route that was largely unmapped and barely explored. Behind Mombasa lay a scorched, waterless desert. Beyond, a horizonless scrub country climbed toward a jagged volcanic region bisected by the Great Rift Valley. A hundred miles of sponge-like quagmire marked the railway's last lap. The entire right of way bristled with hostile tribes, teemed with lions and breathed malaria. What was the purpose of this 'giant folly' and whom would it benefit? Was it to exploit the rumoured wealth of little-known central African kingdoms? Was it to destroy the slave trade? To encourage commerce and settlement? THE LUNATIC EXPRESS explores the building of this great railway in an earlier Africa of slave and ivory empires, of tribal monarchs and the vast lands that they ruled. Above all, it is the story of the white intruders whose combination of avarice, honour and tenacious courage made them a breed apart.

Author : Peter Kimani
Publisher : Akashic Books
ISBN 13 : 1617755036
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dance of the Jakaranda written by Peter Kimani and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation. The novel traces the lives and loves of three men—preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim—whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson Rajan—who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction—accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past. With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa. “Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.” —The Gazette “A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Kimani’s novel has an impressive breadth and scope.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.” —Publishers Weekly “Lyrical and powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews

Author : Charles Miller
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lunatic Express written by Charles Miller and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lunatic Express is the saga of the turbulent international race for the mastery and development of an immense region of East Africa that all but visionaries thought worthless. It is the narrative of the building of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway itself - the colossal six-year enterprise that was to cost u5,000,000 and countless lives, from derailments, collisions, disease, tribal raids and the assaults of wild animals."

Author : Carl Hoffman
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062439049
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Wild Men of Borneo written by Carl Hoffman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2019 EDGAR AWARDS NOMINEE (BEST FACT CRIME) • A BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK AWARDS FINALIST Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary “Wild Men of Borneo.” One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times bestselling author Carl Hoffman journeyed to find the truth, discovering that nothing is as it seems in the world’s last Eden, where the lines between sinner and saint blur into one. In 1984, Swiss traveler Bruno Manser joined an expedition to the Mulu caves on Borneo, the planet’s third largest island. There he slipped into the forest interior to make contact with the Penan, an indigenous tribe of peace-loving nomads living among the Dayak people, the fabled “Headhunters of Borneo.” Bruno lived for years with the Penan, gaining acceptance as a member of the tribe. However, when commercial logging began devouring the Penan’s homeland, Bruno led the tribe against these outside forces, earning him status as an enemy of the state, but also worldwide fame as an environmental hero. He escaped captivity under gunfire twice, but the strain took a psychological toll. Then, in 2000, Bruno disappeared without a trace. Had he become a madman, a hermit, or a martyr? American Michael Palmieri is, in many ways, Bruno’s opposite. Evading the Vietnam War, the Californian wandered the world, finally settling in Bali in the 1970s. From there, he staged expeditions into the Bornean jungle to acquire astonishing art and artifacts from the Dayaks. He would become one of the world’s most successful tribal-art field collectors, supplying sacred works to prestigious museums and wealthy private collectors. And yet suspicion shadowed this self-styled buccaneer who made his living extracting the treasure of the Dayak: Was he preserving or exploiting native culture? As Carl Hoffman unravels the deepening riddle of Bruno’s disappearance and seeks answers to the questions surrounding both men, it becomes clear saint and sinner are not so easily defined and Michael and Bruno are, in a sense, two parts of one whole: each spent his life in pursuit of the sacred fire of indigenous people. The Last Wild Men of Borneo is the product of Hoffman’s extensive travels to the region, guided by Penan through jungle paths traveled by Bruno and by Palmieri himself up rivers to remote villages. Hoffman also draws on exclusive interviews with Manser’s family and colleagues, and rare access to his letters and journals. Here is a peerless adventure propelled by the entwined lives of two singular, enigmatic men whose stories reveal both the grandeur and the precarious fate of the wildest place on earth.

Author : David Foster Wallace
Publisher : Back Bay Books
ISBN 13 : 0316040940
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book McCain's Promise written by David Foster Wallace and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is John McCain "For Real?" That's the question David Foster Wallace set out to explore when he first climbed aboard Senator McCain's campaign caravan in February 2000. It was a moment when Mccain was increasingly perceived as a harbinger of change, the anticandidate whose goal was "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest." And many young Americans were beginning to take notice. To get at "something riveting and unspinnable and true" about John Mccain, Wallace finds he must pierce the smoke screen of spin doctors and media manipulators. And he succeeds-in a characteristically potent blast of journalistic brio that not only captures the lunatic rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign but also delivers a compelling inquiry into John McCain himself: the senator, the POW, the campaign finance reformer, the candidate, the man.

Author : Charles Miller
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1784972711
Total Pages : 910 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lunatic Express written by Charles Miller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1895, George Whitehouse arrived at the east African post of Mombasa to perform an engineering miracle: the building of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway – a 600-mile route that was largely unmapped and barely explored. Behind Mombasa lay a scorched, waterless desert. Beyond, a horizonless scrub country climbed toward a jagged volcanic region bisected by the Great Rift Valley. A hundred miles of sponge-like quagmire marked the railway's last lap. The entire right of way bristled with hostile tribes, teemed with lions and breathed malaria. What was the purpose of this 'giant folly' and whom would it benefit? Was it to exploit the rumoured wealth of little-known central African kingdoms? Was it to destroy the slave trade? To encourage commerce and settlement? THE LUNATIC EXPRESS explores the building of this great railway in an earlier Africa of slave and ivory empires, of tribal monarchs and the vast lands that they ruled. Above all, it is the story of the white intruders whose combination of avarice, honour and tenacious courage made them a breed apart.

Author : Carl Hoffman
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063009781
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Liar's Circus written by Carl Hoffman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brilliant, riveting, funny, terrifying journey into the beating heart of Trumpland." —Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls In this daring work of immersive journalism, based on hundreds of hours of reporting, Carl Hoffman journeys deep inside Donald Trump’s rallies, seeking to understand the strange and powerful tribe that forms the president’s base. Hoffman, who has written about the most dangerous and remote corners of the world, pierced this alternate society, welcomed in and initiated into its rites and upside-down beliefs, and finally ushered to its inner sanctum. Equally freewheeling and profound, Liar’s Circus tracks the MAGA faithful across five thousand miles of the American heartland during a crucial arc of the Trump presidency stretching from the impeachment saga to the dawn of the coronavirus pandemic that ended the rallies as we know it. Trump’s rallies are a singular and defining force in American history—a kind of Rosetta stone to understanding the Age of Trump. Yet while much remarked upon, they are, in fact, little examined, with the focus almost always on Trump’s latest outrageous statement. But who are the tens of thousands of people who fill these arenas? What do they see in Trump? And what curious alchemy—between president and adoring crowd—happens there that might explain Trump’s rise and powerful hold over both his base and the GOP? To those on the left, the rallies are a Black Mass of American politics at which Trump plays high priest, recklessly summoning the darkest forces within the nation. To the MAGA faithful, the rallies are a form of pilgrimage, a joyous ceremony that like all rituals binds people together and makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. Both sides would acknowledge that this traveling roadshow is the pressurized, combustible core of Trump’s political power, a meeting of the faithful where Trump is unshackled and his rhetoric reaches its most extreme, with downstream consequences for the rest of the nation. To date, no reporter has sought to understand the rallies as a sociological phenomenon examined from the bottom up. Hoffman has done just this. He has stood in line for more than 170 hours with Trump's most ardent superfans and joined them at the very front row; he has traveled from Minnesota to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Hampshire immersing himself in their culture. Liar’s Circus is a revelatory portrait of Trump’s America, from one of our most intrepid journalists.

Author : Frank Coates
Publisher : HarperCollins Australia
ISBN 13 : 073044497X
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Mombasa written by Frank Coates and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impossible dream ... and a love to defy the odds. In 1897 Ronald Preston attempts the seemingly impossible - building a railway line from exotic Mombasa, on the east coast of Africa, to Lake Victoria, deep in the continent's wild and dark heart. His new bride, Florence, insists upon joining him. Yet ahead lie hostile tribes, dense jungles, floods, drought, man-eating lions, political intrigue, disease ... and somewhere within their crew stalks a silent menace. Ronald and Florence defy the odds and the conventions of their time to accomplish what the world said could not be done. Based on a true story, BEYOND MOMBASA takes the reader on a heart-stopping adventure across Africa - a land where man is pitted against not only nature, but against himself ... 'blockbuster adventure with authenticity' WEEKEND AUStRALIAN

Author : Elizabeth Bevarly
Publisher : Harlequin
ISBN 13 : 1460302907
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Express Male written by Elizabeth Bevarly and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is everyone calling her "Lila"? Music teacher and part-time lingerie saleswoman Marnie Lundy's biggest thrill is playing piano at the local mall…until the night everyone seems to think she's somebody else! Suddenly she's being addressed in code, menaced by a man who claims to know her intimately and rescued by a handsome spymaster who thinks she's a threat to national security! But OPUS agent Noah Tennant has a feeling she's more Mata Hari than Mother Teresa. Could a woman this sexy truly be innocent, or is Marnie his opponent in a deadly game of spy vs. spy?