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Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International) by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Ryszard Kapuscinski Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published) Published: 2008-06-10 ISBN: 1400078784 Number of pages: 288 Publisher: Vintage Product features:
Book Reviews of Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)Book Review: Memories of an Old Friend Summary: 4 StarsThe Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski was one of the great journalists of the Twentieth Century. His beat was was the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia. As a Pole during the Cold War, Kapuscinski had access to places that few Western journalists could visit. He was an immensely gifted writer who left us vivid portraits of peoples and nations leaving behind the the colonial world and disorientedly entering into the modern age.
While traveling to the far reaches of the developing world, Kapuscinski's favorite travelling companion was the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. Kapuscinski closely identified with the ancient historian and traveller. Carrying his copy of "The Histories" with him, Kapuscinski spent many years teasing out the meanings and themes found in the book. In many ways, Kapuscinski saw himself as a modern day Herodotus visiting the world's obscure corners and bringing back to his readers what he had learned and experienced.
"Travels with Herodotus" starts conventionally enough as an autobiographical tale of a young journalist leaving Poland in the late 1950's and visiting the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa. But as the book moves forward, the autobiography recedes and a literary appreciation of Herodotus begins to more fully emerge. Kapuscinski's portrait of Herodotus is heart felt and well written. However, as a long time reader of Kapuscinski, I wanted to learn more about him and I was dissapointed to see the character of Kapuscinski fade away. Nevertheless, "Travels with Herodotus" was a pleasure to read. Recommended.
Summary of Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)From the renowned journalist comes this intimate account of his years in the field, traveling for the first time beyond the Iron Curtain to India, China, Ethiopia, and other exotic locales.
In the 1950s, Ryszard Kapuscinski finished university in Poland and became a foreign correspondent, hoping to go abroad - perhaps to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was sent to India - the first stop on a decades-long tour of the world that took Kapuscinski from Iran to El Salvador, from Angola to Armenia. Revisiting his memories of traveling the globe with a copy of Herodotus' Histories in tow, Kapuscinski describes his awakening to the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of new environments, and how the words of the Greek historiographer helped shape his own view of an increasingly globalized world. Written with supreme eloquence and a constant eye to the global undercurrents that have shaped the last half-century, Travels with Herodotus is an exceptional chronicle of one man's journey across continents.
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