The great Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839-1888) made an indelible contribution to the world’s atlases, and its store of zoological and botanical knowledge, as a consequence of his four arduous and dangerous expeditions through the Central Asia of Western Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Northern Tibet. Donald Rayfield’s biography of Przhevalsky – first published in 1976 and drawing on … drawing on the exporer’s diaries, letters, and published works – tells the thrilling story of the explorer’s groundbreaking journeys, undertaken in an age of extreme political sensitivity between Russia, China and Britain. A rich portrait emerges of an extraordinary Byronic character who was ill-suited to civilisation but much at home with the loneliness and hardship of the nomadic life. A rigorous army officer and a phenomenal shot, gifted also with a photographic memory, Przhevalsky became one of the most widely-admired men in Russia, and Rayfield adroitly explores the grounds of his reputation.
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Since I have read every book in Sue Grafton’s series, reviewing them separately would be repetitious. I have enjoyed every one of them!
Her heroine is the quintissential ‘PI Next Door’ (if you are living in Chicago…)she’s a very real, likeable, authentic , and independent single woman whose life is full of equally welldrawn characters… her …
I read mysteries all the time. I want a command of English and something I never knew before. Not many like that, and now we have lost Sue Grafton.
My standard for a 5-star rating: a book I wish I could read again for the first time.
Most Dick Francis.
All Josephine Tey. A#1 is “The Daughter of Time” A#2 is “Brat Farrar.”
Dorothy Sayers’ …
Deadbeat was early in the series before it became repetitive.