No comments about Grace Kelly (Movie Icons).

No comments about Cowgirl Legends: From the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

5 comments about The Camera My Mother Gave Me.

1. This book reads really fast. A light book compared to the authors other memoir of being in an institution.



2. I'm not sure which book the other reviewers are talking about when they say this book is funny. I didn't find it funny at all. In fact, I found it tiresome. The author is whiny. The fact that she starts so many sentences off with, "My vagina..." and uses the f-word so much just gets old. At some point, the use of the word becomes gratuitous and unnecessary. Her delivery is bland and dispassionate for someone who is narrating her own book. This book bored me stiff.



3. Kaysen is an excellent writer and that is why I decided to read "the Camera My Mother Gave Me." The book worries me because I am a woman - all though I do not suffer from any kind of vulva illness. My opinion is that every woman should be worried to a certain degree about "problems" that can and may occur in our lifetimes. That is why I do recommend this novel, because I now am aware of what other women may be suffering from. And what could at some point happen to me.



4. I read this book and after getting through about a third of it I started to get frustrated. I kept asking myself why she didn't go see another doctor. I feel like if I were in that much pain and my regular doctor couldn't provide answers I would keep seeing different people until I came across someone who could give me answer. It's like if someone has been diagnosed with cancer she usually gets a second or third opinion. It was just frustrating to me all the things she was trying. And if that weren't enough, by the end of the book no progress had been made. I felt like she could very well have ended the book in the middle and I would have been left with the same dissatisfied feeling I had at the end. I got this book on sale at Barnes and Noble for 2 or 3 dollars and I'm glad I only paid that much for it.



5. While the book was a quick, funny read the end left me hanging. Did she try acupuncture? Did she ever get better? Was she happy or sad at the end?

5 comments about Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford.

1. Mitford-despisers complain that we fans too easily forgive them their sins on account of their rare wit and charm. Well, in the case of Decca at least, this charge is unfair. She was funny (and cruel): her account of a 1962 house party at Chatsworth is quite delicious; ditto her accounts of what passes for high society on Mull. But she was also brave, in journalism and in life. A deathbed letter to Bob - 'It's so odd to be dying, so I must just jot a few thoughts' - is a model of clarity (though perhaps you would expect this in one who had so much time and energy railing against an industry that so pointlessly prettified corpses); so, too, is a letter to Benjamin in which she urges him to seek help for his illness. The fact remains that as an example of what a woman can do once she has rid herself of, or at least decided to ignore, the expectations of others - family, men, society - Jessica Mitford will always take some beating. That she is also a hoot is merely the icing on the cake.



2. Sussman does a great job of, first, setting the scene and then laying out in a very readable way this enormous collection of Jessica Mitford's letters. She's always been a favorite of mine. This collection is adding greatly to my appreciation.



3. the book itself is well put together and edited. the book's subject is self centered and likes mostly to hear herself talk. i found it to be boring.



4. I got this as a gift for my brother and I was lucky enough to receive it as a Christmas present a few months later. Jessica Mitford Treuhaft was one of the famous Mitford sisters. Her sister Nancy wrote novels of manners such as "Love In A Cold Climate", her sister Unity was a Hitler groupie who shot herself in Munich shortly after WWII was declared and spent the remainder of her life with severe brain damage, her sister Diana divorced Brian Guinness to marry the head of the Union of British Fascists, and her sister Deborah is the current dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica, or Decca as she was called since childhood, ran away from home to elope with a Communist named Esmond Romilly and to fight against fascism in Spain; all of this caused rather a major rift with her family. The couple eventually moved to America; Esmond was killed in action after joing the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Decca ended up in Oakland, CA married to a radical lawyer named Bob Treuhaft. But like many who grew up in her time and class, she wrote wonderful letters - quirky, funny, sometimes about awful serious matters but always with a sense of the absurd. She was committed to the work of the Communist Party in the early civil rights movemement in California and traveled to many parts of the country to demonstrate; she and her husband were targets of Congressional investigations and denied passports for years, and she became an effective community activist. After falling away from the CPUSA, she continued her activism, and her letters describe some of the most important struggles of progressive America in the '40s, '50s and '60s. She really came into public awareness in a bigger way when she wrote a groundbreaking expose of the predatory practices of the funeral industry, "The American Way of Death." She followed that up with exposes of the prison industry and other abuses and was active until shortly before her death in the late 90s.
   The letters are gems - when I finished the book, I thought, "I'd really have loved to have known this woman and to have received some of these wonderful letters." Some made me laugh out loud, others made me recognize anew the courage of those who had the vision and the foresight to combat racism in America at a time when it was simply taken for granted. They show a concern for family that is poignant as well as a sense of honor that is almost rigid - when Winston Churchill, who was her cousin, freed her sister Diana and Diana's husband Oswald Mosley from prison after WWII, she wrote to him in protest, saying that their work on behalf of fascism was a danger to freedom everywhere and that they belonged in prison, and that the fact that Diana was her sister did not alter her opinion about that.
   The only shadow I found over this wonderful collection of letters was the lack of any sense of real recognition of the evil committed in the name of Communism by Stalin, Mao and others. She defended against this criticism by pointing out that no one but the CPUSA was taking serious action on civil rights when she came to this country in the '40s, but she never really acknowledges the darker side of the party's international activity. One gets the impression that she sees it as the lesser of two evils; and as much as one can recognize that at that time and place Fascism was certainly the more immediate and powerful threat, one is still troubled by Decca's lack in this area of the uncompromising commitment to truth that characterizes so many of her activities.
   I cannot imagine anyone who is familiar with this period of history in England and America not being fully engaged by this wonderful book. I can't recommend it highly enough.



5. This book was giant, in size and in scope. I must admit I did not finish it. Jessica "Decca" Mitford was a bitchy, brilliant, fascinating, annoying, funny, sarcastic and altogether mysterious woman. This book of her letters gives us a very tiny keyhole of insight into that enormous personality. I don't mean that it fails to give us enough; I just mean no book is really capable of parsing the enigma of Decca. It would be a good addition to anyone's book collection, especially Anglophiles, Francophiles, and Bibliophiles!

2 comments about The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull.

1. This biography is actually quite good - and overdue. Underhill seems to be not much 'captured' by her amorous and dominant beta female subject. (That's a common problem in biography). There are certain problems about V. Woodhull however, as there are about all prominent persons. She was, as was her sister, a courtesan, a New Age Spiritualist (inspired by the Fox 'knuckle cracker' sisters). Amazingly, a NY female Wall Street stockbroker!, a female candidate for president! Not much came of either, but she remained amazing anyway.
   That she married some rich English baron or other and moved to England, thereafter supporting her neer do well relatives (including her mother) for decades (as she had in the States), seems beside the point, except that it's clear that she finally gave up the fight. As she saw it - or are we merely imagining how she saw it? Perhaps we expect too much from Victoria, and given her times, she pretty much gets a pass. She caused not such harm as Ellen White, Madam Blavatsky or Mary Baker Eddy. Give thanks.
   Part of this biography delves into the internal feuds in the early 1st wave feminist movement, which tells us a bit about 'power seeking' (even in females), as does the life of Woodhull herself. At each stage of her (and her relatives) life, there are powerful males, her father, the drunken doctor she marries young, Cornelias Vanderbilt, her literary second husband, General Ben Butler, whoever is male and useful. Excepting her father, they all get sexed, and they all are useful. Not that such maneuvering towards the top by women is all that uncommon in the last 4,000 years of human history. That it's a woman's way, does not one thinks, make it a life to emulate in the modern feminist movement. I'll take Abigail Adams anytime.



2. This is an amazing biography of Victoria C. Woodhull a little known suffragist and spirtualist of the late 19th Century. Growing up poor in a dysfunctional Ohio family she pulled herself up from poverty to become a leading sufferagist as well as opening with her sister the first female owned wallstreet brokerage company. This is just the tip of the iceberg as she ran for president in the 1870's, exposed a huge scandal concerning a leading New York minister, and eventually married into one of the richest families in England. Her ideas and opinions on sexuality, divorce, and women's rights were a hundred years before her time. She was no saint; her unconventional and adventurous lifestyle recieved much criticism and was her eventual undoing in society. Her life is more fantasic and entertaining than fiction. Victoria Woodhull has been hidden in the closet like a skeleton for too long; if you read any non-fiction this year, read this book!

5 comments about An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

1. If you like/love Tracy and Hepburn in movies, you'll love this book. It's a true account of their lives and how their affair came about, how it was hidden to the world (insiders in Hollywood knew all about it). In fact, it was so well hidden (Kate used to always slip in the back way at hotels), that Tracy's wife upon meeting Hepburn told her she was shocked, that she thought the affair was only a rumor. A very good read, you won't be disappointed.



2. I have always thought that Tracy and Hepburn were a Great couple in Movies, but they were amazing in real life too. The book was a very good history of each of their lives and how they became intertwined. I think it is one of the best books that I have ever read.



3. I have been looking for years for a Spencer Tracy biography and this is about as close as I could find. I have to say I was very pleasantly surpried by this book. First off, it is a quick and easy read and is especially well written for one of these Hollywood tomes. Secondly, rather than just telling the story of the Tracy/Hepburn love affair, it gives you so much background on both stars that I feel as though I have gotten my long sought after Tracy bio. Finally, the book helps the reader to understand that there really is no understanding a love like Tracy and Hepburn shared. Neither could put it into words and neither seemed interested in doing such. Rather than a lot of psycho babble that you usually get in these types of books, the author realizes that there is no accounting for taste and there is no explaining love.



4. These two screen giants met on the set of Woman of the Year in 1942 and were together until Spencer died of a heart attack, shortly after wrapping up Guess Whose Coming to Dinner in 1967. This book chronicles their remarkable, romantic pairing in an era where a movie star's private life could remain hidden from a prying public. Spencer was married to a devoted Catholic, Louise, and he refused to divorce her. He also felt a tremendous sense of guilty about his deaf son. So marriage was out of the question, but Kate didn't care, she just wanted she be with Spencer, and she was, following him all over the world to sit worshipfully at his feet.

   Andersen dutifully chronicles the nine classic Tracy-Hepburn films and gives some intriguing behind-the-scenes glimpses into each movie. There is also much information about Tracy's legendary bouts with the bottle, his brief fling with Gene Tierney in the early 50's and Kate's affair with Howard Hughes in the 1930's. All the bases are covered, but I wish Andersen would have interviewed more people close to the duo. Still, an engrossing read and essential for anyone enamored with either Spencer or Kate.




5. I found An Affair to Remember a truly remarkable portrait of Hepburn and Spencer's lives (before and after they met). The book was interesting and well written. A great pick for anyone interested in either actor.

3 comments about Getting over Getting Older.

1. This book was like talking with a close friend. I thank Letty for being honest, sensitive and very funny. If you are 50 it's a must read...I bought 6 copies to give to friends!



2. Maybe I didn't enjoy this so much because I am only 45 and, therefore, a good 15 years younger than the author. That makes us of different generations making her personal anecdotes difficult to relate to. In addition, I don't have a great career, I'm not married, I don't live in a large metropolitan & cosmopolitan area, I don't have a group of fabulous girlfriends to drink wine and compare stories with, and I don't have kids (and likely never will) so again, I found a lot to not bond about with the author.

   The opening chapter, however, was wonderful and had me howling in my chair. I hoped that fun would be maintained throughout the book. Instead, I felt the book spent too much time talking about superficial aspects of aging like eating right, exercising, and keeping your mind alert by trying new things (well, duh!). She also completely overlooks the more spiritual aspects of mortality in favor of political discussions about women in society (important but not what I'm needing right now). There was a rather graphic description of a breast bioposy which was riveting (the author holds nothing back there and thank you for that) Maybe in another five years I'll connect better instead of finding this to read very much like an irritating upbeat "how-to-be a glowing senior citizen article" out of Good Housekeeping Magazine. For now, I'd recommend Awakening at Midlife by Kathleen Brehony.




3. A must-read for those 49 1/2 and--sorry--older. My sister (55) recommended it to me (52) after I noticed that some men I had dated were starting to die in their 50's. I landed on Pogrebin's
   reassuring comment that death isn't a factor of aging but a factor of life with relief and recognition. She approaches the good, the bad, and the ugly (and what her grownup daughters label even as disgusting) with humor and the sense of sisterhood and community that are her hallmark.

4 comments about Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics and Air Piracy.

1. Scene: 1976. French sharpshooters surround an American aircraft parked on the tarmac of an airport outside Paris, while inside a blonde, pretty American girl - an educated, nice girl anybody would be pleased to have for a daughter - struggles to make things as comfortable as possible for the hijacked American passengers. Kind of movie-of-the-week stuff. Except ... she's not a flight attendant. She's one of the hijackers.

   This dissonance between who Julienne Eden Busic is and what she appears to be, indeed what she was growing up in a small Oregon town, forms the essence of her unusual and illuminating memoir, Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics and Air Piracy.

   In language that is luminous, thoughtful, original and flayingly honest, Busic describes her transition from apolitical schoolgirl to revolutionary and the catalytic agent: love. But in Busic's rendering, the line between love and fate blur.

   She meets exiled Croatian dissident Zvonko "Taik" Busic on a street corner in Vienna, though "meet" is perhaps the wrong term -- he seems to be stalking her. Yet he's late for their first date, careless about time. In fact, without in any way being violent or overbearing, he moves early to assert dominance in their relationship. "In truth ... I am too fond," Juliet says to Romeo after agreeing to marry him after only one meeting. "And therefore thou mayst think my `havior light: But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange." Julie and Taik's romance has that quality, if not so much the passionate declarations of Shakespeare's famous lovers, still the sense of the hand of fate trailing downward, touching one then the other, almost as if at random, linking them forever together, no matter how high the cost.

   And the cost is very, very high. Julie first does six months in a squalid Yugoslav prison for smuggling and distributing revolutionary leaflets inside that then-Communist nation. When she is finally freed, upon bathing, she leaves a scum of dirt in the bathtub, so filthy is she from her ordeal. Taik neither congratulates her on her stamina nor thanks her. It seems that, so ingrained in him is the idea that one suffers for one's convictions that he doesn't even acknowledge her sufferings for his.

   And his conviction is that people should be allowed to express their own culture in their own country, to be free men on the land on which they were born. Busic paints him as dark, foreign, next to her open, American blondness. But such convictions as his are quintessentially American. Which is why, when the idea of a non-violent hijacking occurs, it is upon American soil that it is hatched and the plan is to educate Americans, who have been kept largely in the dark by U.S. media, of the plight of the Croatians, this annexed people caught up in the country-carving that occurred in the wake of World War I.

   The plan seems naive in retrospect. Post September 11th, chillingly so. Yet, in an odd way, still "necessary" from the revolutionary perspective. Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the recent Balkan bloodshed, the emergence of Croatia as an independent nation, Americans still aren't quite sure what it's all about, whose side to be on, can't understand such bloody, nationalist feuds.

   Perhaps, in addition to her fateful love for Taik, this sometimes irritatingly innocent American naivete is what propelled the author toward her revolutionary destiny. To many world citizens, America must seem like a fat and innocent child, the majority of its citizens largely unaware of the sufferings and political machinations affecting the daily life of most other residents of this planet. Once made aware, however, some Americans chafe at their confinement in the playpen, feeling, with George Bernard Shaw, a longing for "the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

   Julie Busic, with her Master's degree in German and linguistics, served thirteen years in a federal prison for her role in the hijacking. Taik, gray-haired now but still buttressed by his convictions, the support of Croatian nationalists who consider him a hero, and, not incidentally at all, the remarkable love of his wife, Julie, remains imprisoned in a country, the United States, still reeling in shock that political struggle can touch its residents so personally.

   Lovers and Madmen is a travelogue of the underground revolutionary life. Julie and Taik move from city to city, sometimes ushered out by security police, sometimes ducking under windows in fear of bullets. They drink wine in Paris with a gentle, artistic dissident who would later be assassinated, scrub floors in dingy Cleveland apartments to scrape together a living on the run, collaborate with Irish revolutionaries. And throughout, they endeavor, together, to discover, what is this thing that has touched and joined them: this fateful love that endures, across oceans, cross culture, behind bars.




2. With the subtlety of an impressionist brush, a picture quickly emerges of love, intrigue, and a passion for the people of Croatia. Lovers and Mad Men takes the reader on a detailed tour into the inner workings of the Croatian Nationalist Movement as it gains power as a political force. The reader is whisked through the back streets of world capitals and into dark alleys for clandestine meetings with the leaders of terrorist groups. Keeping just steps ahead of the dreaded Yugoslav secret police, you go with the Busics to meetings in smoky cafes and bars. You can almost taste the Slivovitz. Busic then keeps the reader by the hand as she details the inner workings and hard life of a committed member of a subversive group. She opens her emotional being for all to see as her passion for her lover, Taik, and the Croatian people grows. It may read, at times, like an action packed fictional work of Ian Fleming, but it is all true, as experienced by a regular girl from Portland Oregon. Take this one with you on that long plane flight. With this book, you won't mind economy class.



3. Sometimes the seeds of revolution are nurtured in backrooms, sometimes in the beds of lovers. This is the autobiographical account of a young American woman's involvement in the Croatian underground in the 1970s. It chronicles her internal machinations as well as her role in the movement to free Croatia from the totalitarian grip of communist Yugoslavia. At first, her involvement is for love of her Croatian boyfriend (Zvonko), then from a deep commitment to the liberation of Croatia. It began with a little favor--the dumping of pro-Croatian leaflets from a tower in the center of Zagreb which resulted in her arrest and brief imprisonment in Yugoslavia. The couple's subsequent activities, and flight from the Yugoslavian secret police, are then traced through Austria, Yugoslavia, Germany, France, Ireland, and the United States, ending with the coup de grace of an airliner hijacking as a political statement in New York City in 1976. Her story reminds the reader that youthful idealism, naivete, and bravado are the best fuel for the fires of unfolding revolutions and insurrections. The author relates her story with superb humor, unflinching honesty, and some wonderfully written prose; especially memorable is the account of her incarceration in Yugoslavia. Her account illustrates well the paradox of one country's criminal becoming another nation's folk hero. Julie Busic served thirteen years of a life sentence for her role in the hijacking. Her husband, Zvonko (Taik) Busic, has just begun the 25th year of his sentence.



4. Julie Busic's Lovers and Madmen is a fascinating and inspiring story about love - a woman's love for a man and for a nation.

   In 1976, four Croatian dissidents and an American woman hijacked a plane in a last-ditch effort to expose the oppression of Croatians within Yugoslavia and the political assassinations of Croatians throughout the world. How did a young American woman become so impassioned about a people for whom she ultimately sacrificed her own freedom and true love? This compelling question guides the reader through the narrative, leading to an intimate discovery of Julie's courage, compassion and spirit and an exploration of one's own heart.

   As she shares the details of her life with husband Taik and recounts the events that culminated in the fateful hijacking, Julie tells a riveting and engrossing tale. There is romance and adventure, comedy and laughs (Julie's encounters with some peculiar Croatian ways are hilarious), suspense and tragedy.

   Lovers and Madmen is essentially about the passions that drive lovers and madmen...the intersection of love and politics and how it shaped one woman's life.

No comments about Si Me Permiten Hablar... Domitila.

5 comments about To the Heart of the Nile: Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa.

1. This book notably advances understanding of the Bakers, wife/husband explorers extraordinaire. Most works focus on Samuel, treating Florence as an exotic appendage, but she was talented, fearless and an active agent in their adventures. The well-written text does justice to her inherently dramatic life, but problematic features lessen its credibility. First, there is much invented dialogue. While based on a sound grasp of primary sources and appreciation of Florence's character, such licence inevitably strays from the facts. Readers will wonder which parts are reliably documented and what is invention, but it makes for a stirring tale. More weighty is that Shipman is not an Africa specialist. This leads to numerous flaws, minor in themselves but cumulatively damaging. Many place and personal names have archaic spellings no longer used in their countries or by Africanists. Shipman routinely adopts the Bakers' negative views, repeating hoary insults about African laziness, theft, lying and dissipation. (The section on Florence's early life and Islamic education in the Ottoman Empire is more nuanced and sympathetic.) She also seems to endorse their Victorian ethnocentrism: "From his plantation days, Sam knew how to command large numbers of natives," p.62. Authors should hew closely to the sources, but also build on them without being constrained by their perspective. The Bakers achieved marvels of physical endurance in Africa, but disrupted many societies by using force to pursue their goals; the book elides this aspect of their 1870s military expedition to the Upper Nile. Cf. R. Collins's harsh but judicious chapter on Samuel Baker (R. Rotberg ed., "Africa & Its Explorers"), showing that the people Florence and Samuel met had their own valid concerns and goals.



2. The story of Florence Baker and Sam Baker was well known to me. In most histories of the discovery of the Nile these two are treated somewhat as a sideshow, an entertainment, not to rank with Richard Burton or John Hanning Speke. But how that view changes with Pat Shipman's worthy biography of this incredible couple. We meet Florence being orphaned and raised to be in a harem, not discovering she was a slave until the day she was to be sold and then an event happens that would make the three musketeer's proud. Sam Baker on holiday, hunting attends the slave auction and finds him self bidding on this 15 year old girl (half his age). He loses and she is condemned to life in an Ottoman harem as a slave. But then out of impulse, out of adventure, or a sense of attraction he kidnaps Florence and they begin one of the most marvelous romances and live their lives full of adventures. They choose to find the true source of the Nile resulting in a truly amazing story. My only complaint with the narrative is that I found the two Nile expeditions became a bit of a tedious read. I think this is because they dwell on many issues and events and don't seem to focus on the two's relationship; or maybe it is because the first 100 to 150 pages are so exciting and spellbinding that one is bound to be let down by just a trek though impossible terrain. The ending is marvelous proving that true stores can have an amazing arch and warmth. After Sam Baker's death Florence lives on to take interest in Sam's young grandnephew that grows up, learns Arabic, and is assigned to the Sudan Political Service. During this work he hears stories of the famous Sam and Florence. For those interested in jihads we even follow the events of the great Mahdi army's crushing defeat of the British and Gordon's death and loss of Khartoum. I recommend to anyone interested in adventure, the history of the Sudan, great romances and the Nile source discovery. And I must mention you must read Alan Moorehead's great books THE WHITE NILE and THE BLUE NILE that more fully tell the story of the discovery of the source of the Nile.



3. Based on journal entries, private papers, and newspaper articles of the day, Pat Shipman has provided us with a true story of love and bravery. When Sam and Florence Baker set out together to search for the source of the Nile, they encountered unbelievable conditions as they painfully made their way on camel back across the burning desert, and often on foot through the jungle to the heart of Africa. Knowing that they eventually became Lord and Lady Baker is a consolation, as you suffer with their trials, debilitating fevers and horrendous tribal wars. Here we have a story of enduring love amidst great hardship. A book worth reading from beginning to end as you watch Sam Baker rescue this beautiful Hungarian girl from a highly specialized slave auction for girls who had been prepared to grace any Sultan's harem! This remarkable and beautiful young woman went on to save the life of her husband on more than one occasion. The charming black and white sketches and illustrations, plus two maps, add considerably to the value of the book.



4. This book is an hybrid, it's neither a novel nor a non-fiction. It's the attempt of a scientific mind to write a novel on a women explorer she is fascinated with. It sometimes happens that historical characters particullarly appeal to people who deal with something completely different. I think that is at the back of this interesting book. The author is not an historical novelist like Irving Stone, because the structure of the book is plain chronology and the dialogues between the characters sound accademic at best, if not false, but her fascination with Florence Baker gives at the end its fruits. Some stories are so good that however written remain an excellent read.
   Women explorers are rare, and were more so in Victorian times. Florence Baker, an Hungarian girl, adopted in an harem to be later sold as a slave, rescued by the great explorer Samuel Baker lead an intense life accompaning her husband to the darkest part of Africa. The couple took part in the British exploration of the Nile together with Stanley, Grant, Burton and rule of the Sudan and the abolition of slavery with Gordon and others. During their years in England they were part of the best English society and got to know and influence the foreign politics of England. Their life was full of success and public recognition. And they loved each other, apparently from the first to the last day of their lives. Even if this is very romantic in this case it seams to be true and the author makes a point of letting us feel this love and mutual respect.
   The book optimally contextualizes the african and egyptian situation in the period Florence and Sam stayed in Sudan, but better still immerges us in the English society once they got back. We get an excursus of the Baker family, which contributed with various great men to english foreign affairs, the prince of Wales, the Royal Geographic Society, the Mahdi and Charles Gordon another hero of those times. The excellent bibliography gives many further reading suggestions.
   
   As a footnote, I would like to point out that Wikipedia reports Samuel Baker and Florence is mentioned only as his wife. Femminism still has a long way to go!
   
   I would like to thank the author for having written about this woman, because some stories cannot be forgotten!



5. (I wish I could give this adventure 3.5 stars.) When one takes into account the life and times, the journey itself is more amazing than the writing.