Customer Reviews

Travels in Northern Mongolia

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I was very surprised to find this book about my wonderful country Mongolia, and I am very proud that a foreign person would take such interest in my country Even when a child I heard about the famous mountain Burkhan Khaldun, but I have never gone there. Now Don Croner goes to this mountain! I have visited the museum of our Bodg Khan, but I did not know the story of Zanabazar. Now I read about it in this book by a foreigner! And my mother's mother was born in Zavkhan aimag, near Uliastai town, which is in the book. For me, this is a very interesting book. Please, if you want to know something interesting about my country read this book.

I found this book to be very will written, interesting and highly informative. It covers Northern Mongolia very well, and in concert with "Gobi", which I just completed, gives a great profile of all except the Kazakh part of Mongolia in the West of the country. The only downside of this book is that it contains many, many errors in English which suggest that it may have been edited by a non-native speaker. The wrong suffixes are selected for many words, etc. There was also nothing about the author, who seems a very interesting personality. I recommend it for anyone interested in either adventure travel or background on the history, religion and geography of Mongolia.

This book presents a fascinating view of Mongolia, written by an American who has seen and done much more than the typical American tourist. I would agree with others who commented about the strange combination of a highly literate author and a non-native English-speaking editor. This didn't detract from the book at all for me; it merely deepened my curiosity about Don Croner. Who is he? Why would an author who took pains to design the Book and cover, painstakingly draw the book maps, and even select the book's typography- (for heaven's sake!)- allow the most basic grammatical errors to creep into the manuscript?

Most good travel writers, like Paul Theroux for example, bounce the stories of their journeys off of personal revelations. This invigorates their travelogue and allows readers to identify with them as they travel. "Hmmmm," we say, turning the page, "I too would have found that funny, or alarming, or interesting, because I have parents who were hippies in the 60s, or because I once lived next to a Chinese gardener." But although Don Croner's narrative is chock-full of thick description, it contains maddeningly few personal glimpses. We find ourselves reading passages of intelligent observation or wry humor without any knowledge of the writer.

Croner's reticence about himself merely feeds his readers' eagerness to gather together what few facts we can find on him: He's a self-described American of European descent, tall, thin, speaks Russian fluently, and identifies with the American National identity but not at all with American mass culture (although he's very knowledgeable about mass culture). He's a voracious reader, and tends toward history books, but will probably devour anything in English that crosses his path. Like any experienced traveller, he will eat anything, sleep anywhere, and showers when he can- hot, cold or no water. He has a technical background and holds down a favored job- some type of employment with access to sufficient official connections to secure all those visas he needs for moving about a part of the world still notorious for difficulty in procuring travel docs. He either grew up abroad or is an ex-runner who blew out his knees when he was younger, because Americans simply do not walk for enjoyment as much as he does. His editor has learned english from a book or institute of British english, not American english, and displays "spell-check literacy"- that is, has run a computer spell check over the manuscript so that there aren't any glaring spelling errors. What errors there are result from incorrect word endings and grammar errors- stuff that would make it through a spell check.

At any rate, Croner's contribution is his description of places rarely seen, his speculations on the movement of historic personages, and his curiosity about native-held beliefs. With regard to this last point, he queries the locals incessantly in order to differentiate folklore from faith, to separate romantic legend from divine action. An interesting read from several perspectives.

This is a wonderful book that reminds you of when travel was an adventure before globalization made it a packaged commodity. Anyone who loves the romance of travel and can get their hands on a copy should jump on it. The country and people are among the most interesting I have read about, the writer is a real person that takes you with him in a book that seems like what a friend would write back to you. This is a story that includes such things as writing to a Russian cartographer asking where on the map he thinks the true origin of one of the Asia's longest rivers is, meeting a forest ranger in a remote land who had always wanted to find it for himself and setting out through hundreds of miles untracked wilderness to get there. The Mongolian people are unique and you will find no references to a McDonald's. Their country is still theirs. This is a gem of a book.