Thread 24611374

What are some books about real-life adventurers?

>>24611374 (OP)
The white nile

>>24611374 (OP)
Sailing Alone Around the World

>>24611374 (OP)
my nigga quequaag looking boundless and obscure fr

typee and omoo are melville's first hand account of living among cannibals.

West with the Night

Creamy Persian pussy you say? Of course I'll convert habibi.

Jokes aside I am more envious of Burton's life than any other man who have ever lived.

>>24611374 (OP)
my granddad's diary if he had one.

>>24611374 (OP)
iliad and odyssey

>>24611374 (OP)
Probably my favourite non-fiction book, the guy was an art collector turned smuggler who got himself into a whole host of sketchy situations

A Time of Gifts

>>24612437
>The bookThe Jew, the Gipsy and el Islamwas published posthumously in 1898 and was controversial for its criticism of Jews and for its assertion of the existence ofJewish human sacrifices. Burton's investigations into this hadprovoked hostility from the Jews of Damascus. The manuscript of the book included an appendix discussing the topic in more detail, but by the decision of his widow, it was not included in the book when published.
He was unto something...

>>24612671
He did notice something

>>24611374 (OP)
More of a travel book than an adventure book admittedly, but still (in my opinion) a must-read.

T. E. Lawrence wrote an introduction for the second edition and said it’s basically *the* book about the Middle East.

People go on about the ‘archaic’ and ‘difficult’ prose but it’s not that bad. if you know your King James Bible you’ll be fine within a page or two, and even if you don’t, it will only take about a chapter. (Stylistically, Seven Pillars Of Wisdom is just watered-down Doughty.)

>>24611374 (OP)
The voyages of Hans Staden of Homburg who lived among the Tupinamba Indians in 1557

Book: https://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Staden_part2_small.htm

Brazilian film adaptation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmTPHXeCDUg

Mistaken for a Portuguese, Hans Staden was taken slave and lived among the Tupinamba for some years and is an important anthropological resource on that tribe including their customs such as cannibalism and the “tearful greeting”.

>>24611374 (OP)

Pretty well known but definitely worth a mention if you haven't already got it on the list.

>>24611374 (OP)
Josiah Flynt was this weird guy who hung around with hobos & criminals. He was sort of one of them but not entirely.

He wrote some good stuff about them. He was one of the first people to study underworld slang seriously (he introduced a lot of words into general use: "speakeasy", "pinch", "squeal", etc.)

He died aged about 25 or something from a drug overdose, IIRC.


Might be a bit too lowlife (not exactly Victorian Gentleman Adventuring) but interesting. Similar:
— “The Road" (Jack London)
— "Autobiography of a Super-Tramp" (W. H. Davies)

>>24613493
I have this one sitting on my shelf for a while. Is it a good read?

>>24611374 (OP)
<Pic attached> is a great example of "amazing subject-matter, shame about the writing". Neal Ellis is quite a guy (basically he spent his time flying helicopter gunships all round the place but particularly in some nasty little wars in Africa). A half-way competent author (Frederick Forsyth, say) could have made a smash hit out of his life story. Sadly the guy they actually got it is only about one-third competent. A missed opportunity; even so, it's still worth a read.


>>24613536
Depends what you want out of a book. It’s an unpretentious account of five top blokes and a parrot sailing across the Pacific in a balsa-wood raft.

Try two pages and you’ll know if you want to read the rest.

This one !

This is one of my favorites. He was a museum curator that spent most of his time going out into the field to collect specimens firsthand. He was the first person to find fossilized dinosaur eggs. He's also considered to be the real-world inspiration for Indiana Jones. This book is a pretty good summation of his life.