From Publishers Weekly
Author Wimmel, a veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, uses well-researched stories of Western expeditions to Central Asia to demonstrate how travel to that isolated area evolved from landmark voyages of discovery in 1890 to self-assigned feats of personal challenge in 1935. The first chapter recounts the history of Central Asian explorations from ancient times until 1890. In each of 11 chapters, Wimmel profiles an individual or expedition that journeyed through this forbidding region of endless wastes of desert and high mountain ranges. The subjects include pioneering explorer Sven Hedin, who retraced the path of the ancient Silk Road to China and found buried cities; Arnold Henry Savage Landor, characterized as a latter-day Munchausen for the suspected exaggerations in his exciting travel tales; and Sir Francis Younghusband, whose goal was to reach the forbidden land of Tibet. Of all the eccentric individualists profiled here, the best known (and only American) is Roy Chapman Andrews, who began his career sweeping floors at the American Museum of Natural History, and 37 years later became director of the museum. Andrews's Asian travels achieved worldwide renown with his discovery first of a cache of dinosaur eggs in Mongolia, and then the fossilized remains of "Peking man," a primitive ancestor of modern humans. All of these adventurers were also prolific authors, and Wimmel uses extensive quotations from their writings in his vividly written accounts, sure to appeal to armchair travelers. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In these days of jet travel, casual tourism, and international development organizations, it is hard to imagine the far-off mystery that Asia was to Americans and Europeans of earlier generations. Wimmel, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, offers vivid profiles of 11 travelers to Central Asia between 1890 and 1935. He discusses, among others, pioneering Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, English braggart celebrity adventurer Arnold Henry Savage Landor, French mystic Alexandra David Neel, and dashing American scientist-explorer Roy Chapman Andrews (who is said to be the model for Indiana Jones). They embarked on their journeys for different reasons?scientific, spiritual, or the desire for some kind of notoriety. Wimmel does an excellent job of describing and summarizing their journeys. He smoothly incorporates passages from the travelers' own writings and also reminds us of the now forgotten geopolitical importance of Central Asia to Britain and Russia. Included are brief, annotated bibliographies on each traveler. Recommended for public libraries.?Mary C. Kalfatovic, Telesec Lib. Svce., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
