Name: Sahara unveiled
ISBN: 9780679429821

Sahara unveiled

In our imagination, the desert is a scorching flatland, a palm grove like a shimmering green line floating in the distance, an ocean of dunes. You can close your eyes to see it. When William Langewiesche set out to document the state of the Sahara desert he was determined to see just what came before his eyes: nothing more or less. The result is an unsentimentalized, often startling account of the desert. From the southernmost Mediterranean to the African Savannah and west to the Atlantic, Langewiesche's trek took him through the hyper-arid core of the desert, a terrain that taunts the imagination with its unalterable desolation. Here cadavers decompose like sun-dried dates, horizons are so barren that stones are mistaken for trucks, distances so empty that migrating birds have been observed seeking the company of humans. Langewiesche's descriptions of the physical desert are brilliantly matched by his explorations of its psychological landscape: the bitter colonial history, the stoicism of the nomads, the austerity of Islam. Despite the passing of the camel and the caravan, the Sahara remains without compromise. William Langewiesche blends history and reportage, anthropology and anecdote, into an unforgettable portrait of the unsubdued heart of the Sahara unveiled.

What Hacker News says

jeffreyrogersJan 2022

You're assuming he knew where he was. There's a good book called Sahara Unveiled that has several stories in it about people getting lost in the Sahara and dying of thirst. In many cases they were only a mile or two from a place where they could have been saved. The problem is the roads aren't good and are often covered by sand, so people get disoriented and don't know where they are or where they are trying to go. Plus if you leave the shade during the day you will lose water even faster. Maybe this story is fake or staged, but many people have died of thirst in the Sahara even though they could've walked out.

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onychomysJun 2019

I'm about halfway through his book Sahara Unveiled, and it's also wonderful.

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hotpotamusJul 2023

I'm recalling my read through of "Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert" by William Langewiesche. (Great writer, but it wasn't my favorite of his works).

Here's the executive summary:

> It is as vast as the United States and so arid that most bacteria cannot survive there. Its loneliness is so extreme it is said that migratory birds will land beside travelers, just for the company. William Langewiesche came to the Sahara to see it as its inhabitants do, riding its public transport, braving its natural and human dangers, depending on its sparse sustenance and suspect hospitality. From his journey, which took him across the desert’s hyperarid core from Algiers to Dakar, he has crafted a contemporary classic of travel writing.

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