Bissell, Tom. Chasing the sea; lost among the ghosts of empire in central Asia.BISSELL, Tom. Chasing the sea; lost among the ghosts of empire in central Asia. Random House, Vintage Departures. 388p. bibliog. index. c2003. 0-375-72754-X. $14.95. SA Who would ever think that a book about Uzbekistan would be funny and hard to put down? Tom Bissell Tom Bissell is a journalist, critic, and fiction writer, born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. He studied English at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In 1996, the 22-year-old went to Uzbekistan as a volunteer for the Peace Corps. , a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent a few months there in 1996, went back to figure out his personal history and to understand the region's history. His self-deprecating humor humor, according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was , the characters he meets, such as Rustam, his young guide, and his visit with his host family, as well as his knowledge of the history and ecology ecology, study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another. The study of an individual organism or a single species is termed autecology; the study of groups of organisms is called synecology. of the region, turn what could have been a travelog into an insightful look into a geographical region that has been the center of historic controversy and the breeding ground for the rise of historic figures like Jenghiz Khan Jenghiz Khan (jĕng`gĭz, –gĭs kän) or Genghis Khan (jĕng`gĭs, gĕng`gĭs kän), Mongolian Chinggis Khaan and Josef Stalin. Bissell's personal history and his scholarly research into the region combine to create an unusually readable read·a·ble adj. 1. Easily read; legible: a readable typeface. 2. Pleasurable or interesting to read: a readable story. and well-documented look into the past, present and future of an area of the world little known or understood. The style makes it attractive to the casual reader. Nola Theiss, Sanibel, FL S--Recommended for senior high school students. A--Recommended for advanced students and adults. This code help librarian and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also will help extend KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries. |
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