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How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer
 
 
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How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer [Hardcover]

Vic Darkwood (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)


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Book Description

July 10, 2007
No traveler to date has matched the intrepid 19th-century gentleman for his bravery, derring-do, and ability to make a perfect cup of tea in the most malarial of climes. But the sun has set on the golden age of exploration, and the records of these fearless, mustachioed adventurers have vanished from the shelves. In their place have appeared timorous travel guides written by authors who could hardly locate Rhodesia on a classroom globe let alone comment on the proper etiquette of an Italian duel.
Now, with the publication of Vic Darkwood's How to Make Friends and Oppress People, at long last today's aspiring adventurers can avail themselves of the best of classic travel advice on such invaluable topics as:
-Using Anthills as Ovens
-Hunting Elephants and Hippos with a Javelin
-Sleeping on a Billiard Table as a Means of Avoiding Vermin
-Digging a Well with a Pointy Stick
Fully illustrated with over 150 drawings and woodcuts, this inestimable collection of wisdom drawn from actual 19th- and early 20th-century guidebooks will prove essential to any traveler looking to enjoy his excursion abroad or hoping to avoid death at the hands of inhospitable natives.


Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Humorist Darkwood offers travel tips for today's tourist as if the sightseer regarded the world no differently from late-nineteenth-century gentleman adventurers—rich, white males who peered down on the less advantaged. By writing with archaic vocabulary and dated cadences, Darkwood renders such presumptions absurd. Seamlessly sprinkling his text with actual excerpts from these old travelogues multiplies the irony. Mindless insensitivity extends beyond indigenous peoples to the traveler's servants, reducing them to the status of baggage merely to avoid paying for railway tickets. Modern travel receives its own share of Darkwood's disdain as he proposes "boiled guinea pig" over the unpalatable fare served on today's British trains. Except for some advice on traveling in a balloon (not recommended), Darkwood ignores air travel, observing the "increasing vulgarity of this mode of transport." Hints on traveling by elephant and on big-game hunting merit Darkwood's special skewering. Knoblauch, Mark

Review

PRAISE FROM MOTHER ENGLAND:
 
"Vic Darkwood has surpassed himself with a collection of gems that
often seem too ludicrous to be true - but are all genuine. Pieced
together with Darkwood's inimitable wit it makes for a riotous read" 
--Sunday Express
 
"These sons of the Empire have taken many good kickings before -
notably from Peter Cook, Monty Python and the cartoonist Glenn Baxter -
but it is worth being reminded of their snobbery, xenophobia and
sublime idiocy"
--Daily Telegraph
 
"When the oil has run out and air travel is nothing but a memory, the
advice in Vic Darkwood's [How to Make Friends and Oppress People] will come into its own again"
--The Times

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (July 10, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312366922
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312366926
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,106,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Don't go to exotic and/or impoverished locations without it!, February 1, 2008
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This review is from: How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer (Hardcover)
Using Darkwood's wit, quotes from 18th, 19th and early 20th Century travel books and some choice period illustrations this book is a fun collection of absurdities. I read it on a long bus ride from the Gaza border down to the tip of the Sinai and I must say it really hit the spot. Travel has never been so much fun!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars forward into the past, July 23, 2007
This review is from: How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer (Hardcover)
Vic Darkwood has mined the hilarious regions of travel guides from the 1820's to the Victorian era. Those were the days of imperial ambition when Europeans could travel the globe and admire the "strange" cultures of Asia, Africa and remote parts of Europe and the Americas.

Darkwood has extracted the most bizarre anecdotes and travel "tips" for our edification. It is funny when it isn't scary. Just put another raw egg in your shoe to cushion your foot when hiking. Be cautious when building fires in boats, and so on.

Darkwood writes and collects like a man from another time. The book includes many wonderful period illustrations.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and Fun, November 23, 2007
This review is from: How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer (Hardcover)
This is an engaging and utterly engrossing book. Highly recommend this gem when you are traveling, if not for the entertainment value but for some ludicrous exerpts from old travel guides. Hilarious and a fun read that you won't want to put down.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Art of Travel, Francis Galton, Revd Frank Tatchell, The Happy Traveller, Travel Made Easy, The Traveller's Oracle, European Constitutions, The Influence of Tropical Climates, Art of Duelling, Handbook of Travel, Harriet Martineau, James Ranald Martin, Nanny Bridlington, Revolver Shooting, Walter Winans, Colonel Pearce, Eastern Life, Edmund Hull, Francis Gallon, John Steele, Richard Ford, Richard Mecredy, Suitable Attire, The European, Emily Holt
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