Call of the Desert : The Sahara [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Philippe Bourseiller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2004

Sprawling over 3.5 million square miles, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, the Sahara is a mythical land, enchanting not only for its extreme beauty but also for its complex culture. Wrapping its arid terrain around Africa, this vast desert is shared, and sometimes fought over, by some dozen countries.
Enraptured by the desert's magical light and amazingly diverse terrain, its spectacular dunes, stone fortresses, and Edenic oases, photographer Philippe Bourseiller embarked on the first truly comprehensive photographic exploration of this enormous territory. Here, in 200 compelling images ranging from the white sands of Arguin (Mauritania) to the colorful banks of the Niger river (Mali), from the rock paintings of Tassili n'Ajjer (Algeria) to the lakes of Ennedi (Chad), Bourseiller communicates his powerful experience of the desert. A series of texts by Sahara specialists deepens our understanding of the history, people, and landscape of this fascinating area. An invitation to travel the Sahara, this beautiful book will attract fans of the region, of photography, and of world exploration.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Award-winning photojournalist Bourseiller, who spent four years documenting the Sahara Desert, collects the best of his photographs in this huge coffee-table book. Besides the expected shots of sand, sand and more sand—which are gorgeous in scope and detail despite their ubiquity—there are a surprising number featuring sparkling water and lush marshes. The book's fold-out map reveals that the Sahara is dotted with oases and springs and borders oceans, rivers and lakes. Still, water is a precious commodity in the desert, and Bourseiller reveals both its value and its scarcity in the lives of the desert's human inhabitants. Images of fish traps, sailboats, rice paddies and lapping waves contrast sharply with rocky outcroppings, dune seas, camels and veiled nomads. The photographs, organized into chapters with short introductions written by six of Bourseiller's scientist, geographer and journalist peers, usually spill across two vivid, glossy pages. While Westerners may think of the Sahara as the archetypal desert, an untracked wasteland of sand, Bourseiller shows it both as an unforgiving environment and as a beautiful place that stretches across four million square miles and 10 countries and encompasses ancient fortresses, hardy plants, thriving fishing villages, green farm fields and endless starry skies.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Philippe Bourseiller undertook six annual expeditions to the Sahara for four years, eventually compiling an enormous monograph of images of the world's biggest desert. A regular contributor to magazines and books and the photographer of Abrams' Volcanoes, he has been awarded the prestigious World Press Prize five times. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• ISBN-10: 081095589X
• ASIN: B000BZEPLE
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,616,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing images, June 6, 2006

By 

John S (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Call of the Desert: The Sahara (Hardcover)

This book is everything you need to look for the Sahara.

Although I admire the book's images (its main treasure), I'd love to see them being entitled and given a little story behind; instead the notes and titles are placed in the end of the book, provided with page numbers. Yet strangely the book has no pagination and that makes it difficult to find the right page after all.

4.0 out of 5 stars Huge Desert Huge Book, July 19, 2011

By 

Joe M. Donahoe (salisbury maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Call of the Desert: The Sahara (Hardcover)

The book is great. This book is also massive in size and weight so dont think you'll carry it around in a book bag or take to the beach. It is the stunning color photos that make the book. Some photos are of desolate desert expanses, but as the book points out, not all of the Sahara is vast sandy parched land. There are photos of urban centers and villages WITH WATER and some VERY cool photos of people who live in this desert. I liked the photos of old ruins, some from Roman times. Each page is a full photo. To read a description of the photo there is a section in the back of the book where a summary of the photo is provided. I was surprised at how few photo books like this are available, whether on the Sahara or other deserts. I gave this four stars because at the time I was considering purchasing this book it was priced at $38 and the next day when I decided to order it for some reason the price had jumped - significantly- to $50. But I ordered it anyway and I am glad that I did. If deserts are your thing, this is your book. As an aside, the author of this book also appears in an unrelated DVD as one of many commentators in a DVD called Sahara that I also ordered from Amazon and I also highy recommend that Sahara DVD. But for this desert book, just carrying it around will make you thirsty.