Fans of Owen Lattimore, The Road to Oxiana, Aurel Stein, and other like-minded ventures and adventurers will find Porter’s...
In this latest installment in his decadeslong journey through China, Porter (South of the Clouds, 2015, etc.) wanders westward into the mountains, never quite courting danger, never quite avoiding it.
How does one pack for a trip along what the Chinese traditionally called the Road to the West and Westerners the Silk Road? First, get a rucksack, not a pack with a rigid frame. Then put some whiskey in a flask and put the flask in the rucksack. “Once I had the pack and the whiskey out of the way,” Porter, aka Red Pine, amiably writes, “the rest was easy: a couple changes of clothes, silk longjohns, a cashmere vest, a lightweight jacket, a wool hat and gloves.” An extra stomach lining and a big shovel might have come in handy, as we learn, following Porter’s travels from Xi’an into the desert and high country. Fortunately for Porter, though beset by some appallingly bad food, a goodly number of con artists, and a brush with death along a cliffside highway in the Karakoram, he had his wits with him, as well as a firm command of history and literature. Occasionally, his approach to all that learning is a little scattershot: the great Turkic conqueror Tamerlane turns up here and there (e.g., “if Tamerlane hadn’t died, it’s quite possible there would be more mosques today in China than temples”) but sometimes as an afterthought and sometimes repetitively. Still, a little absentmindedness is fine, especially in so unflappable a travel guide. Porter is at his best when interpreting history, a touch less so when updating Michelin (“In addition to coffee and omelettes, John offered other Western favorites, like fried potatoes”) along the way from the Yellow River to the Pakistani frontier.
Fans of Owen Lattimore, The Road to Oxiana, Aurel Stein, and other like-minded ventures and adventurers will find Porter’s latest a pleasure and an inspiration.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61902-710-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
A leading African-American scholar of the law, known for decrying the underrepresentation of minorities in the academy, reflects on protest and race in America. Four years ago, Bell (Law/New York Univ.; Faces at the Bottom of the Well, 1992, etc.), then at Harvard, protested the absence of black women from that university's law faculty by taking an unpaid leave of absence. After much dithering, Harvard failed to hire a black woman law professor; once Bell had taken the two years of leave allowed him by its rules, Harvard fired him, refusing to make an exception for his principled stand. Affecting vignettes reveal how Bell's family inspired and sustained his protest. Accounts of faculty politics, in contrast, find Bell pulling his punches. Rather than settle scores, he seeks to knit his personal and professional experiences into a broad exploration of protest and the responses that it provokes. Alongside of his confrontation with the authorities at Harvard, Bell examines protests by such figures as Paul Robeson, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King while weaving into his book—in a manner familiar to readers of his previous work and to those acquainted with the techniques of ``critical race studies''—an allegorical fable in which citizens of a ruling citadel argue over how to treat the downtrodden outside of their walls. Bell illuminates an ugly picture: Protesters become pariahs, true reform may be impossible to achieve, yet struggle is necessary to preserve dignity and self-esteem. If Bell's pessimism seems a bit hyperbolic, his argument lends moral authority to those who exhort us toward social reform—those such as Bell himself, whose perhaps overdue disillusion with Harvard enables him to forcefully pose questions of how and why the institutional imperatives of power and prestige compromise moral vision. Bell's clearly written jeremiad, with its moving portrait of the author as exemplary protester, will inspire new examinations of struggles in our citadels of power—perhaps even new protests there. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8070-0926-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A slow poke through Montana by Conrad (former editor of Horizons), a guy who likes a side dish of bile to accompany his travels. Conrad hits the road in the Big Sky State to take in the scenery and dig up a little family history. The family side of the story comes and goes—both grandfathers moved to the territory back in the late 1800s—with Conrad trying valiantly to paint them as fascinating characters. They're not, even with murder, mayhem, and adultery thrown in. Nor does Conrad succeed as an artful recorder of today's Montana. He can't help trotting out the obligatory Montaniana—barroom fisticuffs, brushes with Mr. Griz, trouty days, whiskey nights—while historical context comes in spurts from the ``Billings was named after Frederick Billings, an executive of the...'' school of background information. He mooches around with a fine disregard for the consequences, a little piece of bravery much to his credit. Most folks Conrad runs into are either forlorn, bitter, drunk, or just plain ready to brawl—bump into someone and get your lights punched out, mention the wrong name and get your lights punched out, offer an ill-timed comment and get your lights punched out. Then again, maybe he just spent too much time in bars. There is a wealth of detail in theses pages, some of it captivating, from ghoulish doings in Great Falls to the virtues of buffalo meat to tensions over wolf reintroduction to the quick portraits of the folks he crosses paths with, but little, if any, continuity. One item is cobbled to another, a pastiche from which an image of Montana never emerges. Don't expect to learn why they call this land the Last Great Place; even as a miscellany, Conrad's sidelong glimpse of Montana never conjures much excitement. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-258551-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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