Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World [Hardcover]

Mark Fritz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1999

In LOST ON EART: NOMADS OF THE NEW WORLD, Pulizer Prize winning foreign correspondent Mark Fritz intimately tells the tale of an epic moment in history. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes and countries. The great migration has overwhelmed the United Nations, forced the United States into distant wars, triggered tough new immigration laws, and laid the foundation for future conflicts. But LOST ON EARTH is more than recent history; through stunning journalism and expert analysis, Fritz leads us into the twilight world of contemporary refugees as they trek across landscapes that are continually being reshaped by the aftershocks of the end of the Cold War.

Shedding light on the riveting human elements of this point in time, LOST ON EARTH explores a dimension beyond the nightly news footage. Abstract events around the globe are humanized by people like Herbert Puchwein, a detective from Vienna who rescues a busload of orphans pinned down in Sarajevo, and Senada Suljic, whose family, driven from their Bosnian home, pray that their paths will cross again someday. This is the story of a bored East German girl who slips into a forest one day and finds a magical land on the other side; an engineer from Liberia who watches as this neatly constructed life is dismantled by war; a jaded, wandering nurse from Ohio who drifts from emergency room to emergency room, hooked on adrenaline until overdosing on it in Somalia. And a college student who books the ultimate adventure tour - joining the war to recapture the land that exiled him when he was an infant.

Investigating the forces at play in the world, and with compassionate insight into the human will to survive, Fritz shows us where these refugees come from, why they flee, and what they encounter during their journeys. Filled with terror and adventure, tragedy and inspiration, LOST ON EART: NOMADS OF THE NEW WORLD is a remarkable account of the exodus that will affect us all for generations to come.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Los Angeles Times correspondent Fritz presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the world's new homeless?displaced by political upheaval or economic blight, by bloodbaths in Liberia, Kuwait and Sri Lanka, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany or the conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia. Fritz, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting from Rwanda, writes from a refreshingly international perspective born of legwork rather than glib assumptions of a "global village." In a departure from his conventional reporting, these frontline dispatches are deliberately hard-boiled and ironic, unfolding like a series of loosely interconnected short stories. He writes with streetwise empathy for his dislocated subjects, among them a software expert from Togo who flees the dictatorship after his mother-in-law informs him that his wife has been murdered by state security goons and a Kuwaiti-born factory worker/computer student in Germany, ostracized by his Arab friends (even though he is of Iraqi descent) who buy into Saddam Hussein's propaganda as Iraq invades Kuwait. Fritz also dramatically profiles heroic interlopers like Viennese private eye Herbert Puchwein, who spirited a busload of orphans out of war-torn Sarajevo, and American relief worker Mary Lightfine, who plunged into Somalia's civil war. Faulting an "inherently weak" United Nations and a timid, reluctant-to-get-involved United States, Fritz boldly calls for the creation of a freestanding global police force, with international volunteers under U.S. command, dedicated to preventing future wars, genocide and forced migrations. Agent, Sloan Harris.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, 50 to 100 million people have been displaced from their homes, the largest such migration in history, according to Fritz, a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Uprooted by civil war, ethnic strife, or economic conditions, some are displaced within their own borders, and many others have left their home countries entirely. Fritz presents stories of individuals he has interviewed over the past decade. They include East Germans fleeing west, gypsies, Kurds, and refugees from the Yugoslav War, the Iraq-Kuwait War, and the conflicts in Liberia and Rwanda. A surprising number converged on Germany, which at first welcomed them but later closed its borders when too many refugees began to strain social and support systems. Other accounts describe the conditions in refugee camps. The stories are effectively told, but ultimately the book lacks analysis, leaving the reader feeling helpless rather than inspired. Popular collections should nevertheless consider.
-?Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316294780
• ISBN-13: 978-0316294782
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,227,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular!, August 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World (Hardcover)

Fritz' repertorial skill and novelistic approach make a less-than-palatable subject read like a gripping detective novel.

His eye for detail and empathy with the people - and the voices - of those tortured souls literally "Lost On Earth" make this book an invaluable document for our fragmented times.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An all-nighter of a read. I coudn't put this book down., March 4, 1999

By 

Jason H. Dell ([e-mail]) (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World (Hardcover)

I stayed up all night reading this book. And I couldn't sleep for a week because I was thinking about the tragedies and triumphs of the people that Mr. Fritz wrote about -- and the implications of the global exodus that the living victims of post-Cold War wars are undertaking to find safety in a callous and all-too-frequently cruel world. "Lost on Earth" has heightened my awareness of crimes against humanity and aroused my sense of goodwill.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A really great book!, April 2, 2000

By 

Paul Siemering (Cambridge MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World (Hardcover)

If I made a list of books everyone should read, this one would right now be number one. Everything that has happened in the last 10,11 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is in here- East Germany, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia- each story told in the context of the lives of one or a few people, which makes these stories so vivid and real. You'll remember the newspaper headlines, and the stories, but in this book it's like you are experiencing it all for the first time, and personally. Fritz is a terrific writer, I promise you won't be bored. Finally it has very special meaning for Americans. Fritz keeps referring to us a s "the world's only superpower", a concept that hasn't really sunk in for most of us, or most of our "leaders" either. So we really need to do a lot of heavy thinking about what we do, how we act, in fulfilling this historicaly unique role. Buy it!