LikedOverall, I thought this was a pretty thorough, pretty solid biography. I thought the writing was nice.
Desert Queen (1996)
Creators: Liked Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. The trust she earned among the Arab sheikhs and chieftains made her indispensable when war broke out; recruited by British intelligence, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brain for T. E. Lawrence's military brawn. To cap off this amazing career, she participated in the postwar peace conferences as a major architect of the modern Middle East, helping to found the state of Iraq and installing its dashing monarch, to whom she was an intimate adviser. In her lifetime, she was known as the most powerful woman in the British Empire.
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Cheryl StrayedA powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mother's death, with nothing more to lose, Strayed made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker--indeed, she'd never gone backpacking before her first night on the trail. Her trek was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and intense loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
www.cherylstrayed.com
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- Liked by creators6 reviews
- Also biography and memoir81%
- A creator reacted alike13%
- Similar descriptions6%