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Title: The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre ISBN: 0-374-20178-1 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 21 April, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A Different Point of View
Comment: Having read the book and then having read all the other favorable reader's comments, I'm wondering "Did we all read the same book?" Clearly this is a fascinating true history of a very unusual man who lived in the early 19th century in what we now know to be modern Afghanistan. But the tale in NOT told that well. This author could have served the reader well by writing more and quoting less. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page are just riddled with wholesale blocks of text taken "boilerplate" from the 'First American's' own awkward writings ( mispellings, convoluted sentences and all). No doubt the story of Josiah Harlan is a piece of history that should be told. This book, fails to present it well. And do note many of the other reader comments that favorably mention this work...they seem to infer this book offers great lessons about present day Afghanistan and how things work there. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book does not even pretend to do so. If you are interested in current events in that part of the world, go read Newsweek or Time. Not this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: America's First Afghanistan Episode
Comment: Whatever else we must blame them for, Al Queda and the Taliban can be thanked for bringing back to our memories a forgotten American, the first American who was ever in Afghanistan. Josiah Harlan, born in 1799, was barely remembered as a footnote from the First Afghan War, and understandably was snubbed by the British historians of that conflict. Reporter Ben Macintyre, researching the history of the area in order to cover its current events, found references to Harlan and became intrigued. He hunted for Harlan clues in Afghanistan itself, and was led to a tiny local museum in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He came upon what other biographers can only dream of getting: a previously unknown autobiography handwritten by the subject. There was also an ancient proclamation making Harlan absolute ruler of a principality in Afghanistan. Indeed, Harlan inspired a Kipling story, which in turn brought the wonderful John Huston film, and which has now given Macintyre's book its title: _The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). His life is as surprising and exciting as the fictions it inspired.
Harlan first sailed to Calcutta and Canton in a commercial venture in 1820. On a subsequent voyage, while he was in Calcutta, he learned that his fiancée back home in Philadelphia had married another. Emotionally adrift, hearing that the British were about to go to war against Burma, he signed on as a surgeon to the East India Company. Macintyre writes, "That he had never actually studied medicine was not, at least in his own mind, an impediment." His service over, he signed on with an exiled king to lead an army to reclaim Afghanistan, but he had plenty of intrigues and shifts of alliances before that could happen. Eventually he would meet up with the Hazara tribe, which in turn wanted him to create their own invincible military. Of course, he had a price; the prince "transferred his principality to me in feudal service, binding himself and his tribe to pay tribute forever." Harlan had indeed become a king. He also imagined himself a sort of reincarnated Alexander the Conqueror, following Alexander's trails. He even took on his conquests an elephant, the symbol and mascot of the Macedonian conqueror, but it could eventually take no more of the mountain cold. Harlan took comfort in that having to send back the elephant, he was once again emulating Alexander, who had had to leave his own elephant troops behind for the same reason.
Harlan's enterprising assumption of command and kingdom was only put to an end by the Great Game between Britain and Russia in their struggle over the area. He tried to play along, with the plots and shifting alliances that he used for all his fifteen years in the region, but eventually the British booted him out, or in his version, he was disgusted by how the British treated the Afghan natives and sent himself home. He remained active, and was on hand to advise the American government in 1854 about the feasibility of the introduction of camels into the west. Harlan admired the beasts, and it is safe to say that no American knew more about them, but he did not take into account that American horses, not raised with camels, would be unmanageable around them and that cattle would stampede when they saw them. He also tried to become the government advisor on the introduction of Afghan grapes into America; he adored the produce of the region, but any plans of return to the area for agricultural efforts were cut short by the Civil War. Always horrified by slavery, he raised a Union regiment, but he was used to dealing with military underlings in the way an oriental prince would. This led to a messy court-martial, but the aging Harlan ended his service due to medical problems. He wound up in San Francisco, working as a doctor, dying of tuberculosis in 1871. He was essentially forgotten. His rediscovery, in this fast-moving and entertaining biography, is now especially welcome as a timely illumination into the beginnings of dealings between the mysterious Afghanistan and the U.S.
Rating: 5
Summary: great book
Comment: i dont buy the line that mr macintyre's book is a parody of american involvement in afghanistan and iraq. i dont see him as being anti american. to me this is a great book about a great guy who was really amazing. mr macintyre isnt the best writer in the world. sometimes i could not believe what he was saying was true. sure enough i checked it all in my reference books and it was. anyone who wants a good read in the summer should buy this book.
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: The Penguin Press Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Louis L. Cornell ISBN: 0192836293 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King ISBN: 0316835145 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll ISBN: 1594200076 Publisher: The Penguin Press Pub. Date: 23 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen ISBN: 0066211735 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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