Imserba Webstore - West with the Night

	List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $2.59 Your Save: $ 12.41 ( 83% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Manufacturer: North Point Press
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 629.13092 EAN: 9780865471184 ISBN: 0865471185 Label: North Point Press Manufacturer: North Point Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 320 Publication Date: 1982-01-01 Publisher: North Point Press Studio: North Point Press
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: West with the Night Comment: I read this book because someone suggested my family might have been related to Beryl Markham, which is not the case, but... What a woman - this is a true account of one of the first bush pilots in Africa, Beryl Markham, who was the first pilot to fly westward across the Atlantic from England. Although there is some dispute whether she actually wrote this autobiographical account (some say that her paramour, who edited the book, actually wrote it - she never confirmed or denied it), the stories are true and fascinating, encouraging the reader to learn more about her. The writing style is wonderful and interesting - no wonder Hemingway loved it. You wouldn't know this book was first published so many years ago. Customer Rating: Summary: Reads like fiction Comment: I agree with Hemingway that this is a piece of high literature that reads like fiction and spreads itself before the reader like a well-produced film. It drove me to learn more about the author and her life. Customer Rating: Summary: Far far better than I anticipated. Great writing. Comment: Absolutely captivating personal account of times and places long gone. As a fan of "Heat of the Sun," this book was a treasure. Customer Rating: Summary: West with the Night Comment: As a child growing up with her father in Africa, Beryl Markham faced down lions and wild boar. As an adult she trained race horses before learning to fly airplanes and becoming a bush pilot. Eventually she became the first pilot, female or male, to fly west with the night and cross the Atlantic ocean solo from Europe to North America. Markham brings the African bush to life with stories of boar hunts and elephant hunts. Of horse races and airplane flights over desert terrain. She lived a courageous life in a time when girls were only supposed to wear dresses and play with dolls and flying airplanes was a man's job. Highly inspirational to read! There's so much to talk about in mother-daughter book clubs or any book club. How was Markham's life different from so many of the girls in her time? How would her life have been different if her mother was also in Africa raising her? This book is beautifully written; I've read it three times and each reading I glean more and more from it. I highly recommend it for anyone in high school or older. Customer Rating: Summary: Pure Poetry Comment: This forgotten volume is a beautifully written memoir of Markum's time in Africa in the early 1900s. The writing (some have questioned whether husband Raoul Schumacher was actually the author, or at least collaborator) is vividly descriptive and reads like lyric poetry. Hemingway wrote to a friend that "...she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer.....She can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers." Consider this passage from an eloquent retelling of a safari hunt that left one man dead when a fatally wounded lion turned on its hunters as they snapped photographs: "Cremation is a smooth word that seeks to conceal the indelicate reality of a human body being baked in fire.....In mid-afternoon on the African veldt under a harsh and revealing sun, it is at best a euphemism. Still, since men cherish the paradox requiring that to insure immortality they must preserve what is most mortal about them, wood was gathered and a fire was built." The whole account, in just four pages, captures the tragedy of it all--animal and human. Beryl Markum, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, was a contemporary (and perhaps romantic rival) of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) author of the memoir Out of Africa. I highly recommend the audio read by the late Kate Fleming (audio pseudonym: Anna Fields, one of the best audio readers ever and greatly missed).
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