Compulsively Aimless

There was a period where I was fascinated by barbarians from the outside coming to destroy civilization.  In the 1980s I saw an ad for the History Book Club and it featured enough titles on outside marauders that I signed up.  My first acquisitions were on Goths, Huns and the Celts.  1.  The Devil's Horseman: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, James Chambers (1979).  A bad day for Europe when the Mongol armies swept across the Danube on Christmas Day 1241.  Known as "the Devil's Horseman," they were lead by the illiterate military genius Genghis Khan.   Known as barbarians to Western Europe, their tactics have been studied into modern day.  One of my History Book Club purchases.   2.  History of the Goths, Herwig Wolfram (1988).  Once thought of a outsiders who brought down the Roman Empire, Wolfram's thesis is that the Goths were misunderstood.  A dense scholarly study originally written for a...

There are many goals and routes you can devise for travel.  A few have decided that following the fat part of the earth, along the equator, is the way to go.  And there there's one contrarian. 1.  Following the Equator: and Anti-Imperialist Essays,  Mark Twain (Part of the Oxford Edition (1996) .  Bought new as part of complete collection of Mark Twain -- one of the best book values I've ever invested in.   2.  Equator: A Journey, Thurston Clarke (1988).   Bought used somewhere.   3.  The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, Eliza Griswold (2010).   Not quite the equator -- ten degrees north.  This seems to be the rough dividing line between Islam and Christianity.  Griswald explores the fault line from Nigeria to the Philippines.  Bought new.    4.  Pole to Pole With Michael Palin, Michael Palin (1...

If you want to organize your adventures and discoveries three different ways: by geography, by person, and by experience.  Here are three on my bookshelf. 1.   The Oxford Book of Exploration, Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison (1993).   Excerpts of famous and obscure adventures divided into the seven continents with entries ordered chronologically.  Bought used at an impromptu book sale on the steps of townhouse in Adams Morgan.    2.  Dictionary of Discoveries, I.N. Langnas (1959).    Organized by explorer.  Starts with Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi, Italian mountain climber and participant in Italian Arctic expeditions and ends with Eugen Zintgraff, German explorer of Africa.   Bought used at The Bookshop in Chapel Hill, NC.                3.  The Rand McNally Almanac of Adventure: A Panorama of Danger and Daring, Richard Whittingham (1982).   An attempt to cove...

The mystical mountain regions of the Himalayas have captivated western imaginations: British imperial ambitions in the Great Game, spiritual questers seeking enlightenment, or hippies seeking a groovy end of a trail in Kathmandu.  Here's my miscellaneous collection.  1.  Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer (1954).  Austrian Harrer was an expert mountaineer preparing to climb a Himalayan peak when he was interred in India by the British.  He escaped his internment camp to make his way into Tibet.  Harrer gains the confidence of a young Dali Lama and stays in the mountain country until 1950 when he was forced out by the Chinese Communists.  40 pages of black and white photos.  Later made into a movie with Brad Pitt as Harrer.  Book-of-the-Month Club edition.  Bought used at an unremembered location.    2.  Roof of the World: Tibet, Key to Asia, Amaury de Riencourt (1950).   In 1946, de ...

  I grew up on the Great Lakes.  The lakes were always a backdrop for work, play and history.  During his teenage years, my father worked as a steward on passenger ships between Detroit and Buffalo.  My hometown of Huron, Ohio is the southern most port on the Great Lakes.  In the 1970s, ocean going freighters would come from the Soviet Union or Taiwan to load grain from the town's landmark Pillsbury grain silos.  In next door Sandusky, the coal docks picked up rail cars and tipped trainloads of  Appalachian coal into ship holds.  In the summer, we would boat over to the islands of western lake Erie and take our vacation the northern shore of Lake Michigan.  In junior high, I was fascinated by the fact that Oliver Hazard Perry had won a major naval battle  a few miles off shore during the War of 1812.  I wrote an English paper in middle school on ship wrecks on Lake Erie.  In November of that year was the sinking of the Edmund F...

I grew up around the names of Native Americans.  Sandusky (Wyandot for cold water), on Lake Erie and Huron High School across from Shawnee Place and down the road from Miami Place and Tecumseh Place.  Summers in Northern Michigan looking out t the Manitou Islands and hearing the Chippewa legend of the Sleeping Bear.   To the north, the land of Hiawatha.  Here's my collection of Native American books. 1.  Four American Indians: King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, Edison Whitney and Frances Perry (1904).   Histories of four great Native American leaders published as a text book for high schools.   Heavy stock paper with illustrations.  Bought used at the State Department Bookstore with a personal library stamp, William Locke. 2.  Indian Stories, Major Cicero Newell (1912).  Also a school book explaining Native American family life, their skills at hunting and fighting.  Focuses mostly on Dakota tribe.  Il...

It's difficult to be objective about yourself.  Sometimes it takes an outsider to offer a different perspective.  As Americans, our natural disposition is to be liked.  But that's not always the case.  Here's my short collection of outsiders who have come to America and reported their findings.  Some admirers; some less so. 1.  Cio America!  An Italian Discovers the U.S.  Beppe Severgnini (1995).   Columbus discovered America and five hundred years later, Italian journalist, Beppe Severgnini, rented a row house in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood and recorded his observations for the next year.  Severgnini offers a wonderful sense of detachment to make his observations amusing showing affection for America but also gently poking fun.  Bought used somewhere. 2.  American Notes: A Journey, Charles Dickens (1842; Fromm edition, 1985).  In 1842, Charles Dickens toured the U.S. writing about Wall Street, the prison...

For two years, I lived ten miles from the Iranian border.  I had always wanted to see it's great religious and historical sites going back to the days of Xerxes and Darius the Great.  But at the time Iran was off limits to Americans and in any case belligerent toward American hikers.  Meanwhile, I collected some books to help me with armchair travel to Iran.  1. Touring Iran, Philip Ward (1971).   The author published a series of tourist guides to middle eastern hot spots (Touring Libya (3 volumes) and Touring Lebanon) back when  A tourist guide adventurous westerners might have been able to travel there in relative safety.  Ward's guide is definitely for the intellectually minded tourist.  Maps, black and white photos, useful words and phrases and basic information about the cities.  Bought used at the State Department Bookstore.   2.  The Legacy of Persia, Ed. by A.J. Arberry (1953).   Collection of histories wr...

The most remote place on earth is the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.  I've flown over it and traveled to some of its remote islands.  The first adventure was to visit a friend who had signed onto the Peace Corps and was posted Fiji and the Bikini Atoll.  The second was to the Bikini Atoll to return with my Dad 60 years after he had been stationed there as US Navy Corpsman as part of Operation Crossroads--the test of two Atomic bombs. Bikini was the most remote place I've been on earth.  One plane a week that island hopped from a series of other remote islands.  The remoteness felt like a physical presence hanging over your shoulder.  Here's my short collection on the Pacific Ocean.  1.  A Pattern of Islands, Arthur Grimble (1952).    Grimble started his career as an official in the British Colonial Service posted to small British possessions in the Pacific.  He collected his stories of life among local fisherman, tribal chiefs, and...