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A review by michaelnlibrarian
Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold by Michael Benanav
5.0
This is one of the best travel+adventure narratives I have read. A very enjoyable book to read.
Books of this sort ideally have a number of ingredients, ideally balanced so that the shifting back and forth between them isn't distracting (or even annoying). While the main focus is typically on the description of the travel in a narrative, the author needs to provide enough background about himself to provide the narrative context and to provide some historical and other description of where the travel is taking place (again, for context).
The trick is getting the balance right - many such books (in my view) provide too much historical background for the relevant region which often feels like it was copied out of other sources - you almost feel like you are reading a different book. This is not a problem here; Benanav takes a minimalist, but I think sufficient, approach. (I suppose it possible that some readers who are not at all familiar with this part of the world might want a bit more . . . )
In the narrative, ideally you have description of what happened in the different places along the way, and the people the author interacts with, plus some description of what the author learned, both practical and personal - that is all well done in this book. You get to share Benanav's distinct impressions of the people he met and spent time with in particular and his thinking about how they live.
It helps that Benanav writes well.
Towards the very end there are several pages where the author gets expansive in his musings about the significance more globally (literally) of some of what he has encountered that feels a bit overdone - I realized that it was jarring mostly because it confirmed that I was coming to the end of a book that I had enjoyed - one can't really fault an author for two high-flown pages out of 200+.
Books of this sort ideally have a number of ingredients, ideally balanced so that the shifting back and forth between them isn't distracting (or even annoying). While the main focus is typically on the description of the travel in a narrative, the author needs to provide enough background about himself to provide the narrative context and to provide some historical and other description of where the travel is taking place (again, for context).
The trick is getting the balance right - many such books (in my view) provide too much historical background for the relevant region which often feels like it was copied out of other sources - you almost feel like you are reading a different book. This is not a problem here; Benanav takes a minimalist, but I think sufficient, approach. (I suppose it possible that some readers who are not at all familiar with this part of the world might want a bit more . . . )
In the narrative, ideally you have description of what happened in the different places along the way, and the people the author interacts with, plus some description of what the author learned, both practical and personal - that is all well done in this book. You get to share Benanav's distinct impressions of the people he met and spent time with in particular and his thinking about how they live.
It helps that Benanav writes well.
Towards the very end there are several pages where the author gets expansive in his musings about the significance more globally (literally) of some of what he has encountered that feels a bit overdone - I realized that it was jarring mostly because it confirmed that I was coming to the end of a book that I had enjoyed - one can't really fault an author for two high-flown pages out of 200+.