Gargan, Edward A. The river's tale; a year on the Mekong.Random House, Vintage. 332p. illus. bibliog. index. c2002. 0-375-70559-7 $14.00. Gargan is a New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times journalist who has spent a lot of his adult life in Asia. Always fascinated by rivers, he decided to take a year to travel the length of the Mekong Mekong (mā`kŏng, mē`–), Chinese Lancang, one of the great rivers of SE Asia, c.2,600 mi (4,180 km) long. From its marshy source (definitively identified in 1994) on the Rup-sa Pass in the highlands of Tibet, it rises as the , from its beginnings in the mountains of Tibet to the delta in Vietnam. The 3,000-mile journey took him from Tibet, to China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. He went overland o·ver·land adj. Accomplished, traversing, or passing over the land instead of the ocean: an overland journey; an overland route. adv. at times along the river by bus or other transport, talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to" lecture, speech rebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to people, seeing the culture, and writing about it. Numerous small b/w photographs illustrate the text. As a good journalist, he pays attention to the economy, to politics, to history, to individual life stories as he reports his experiences. This is a well-written travelogue, frankly only for those YAs serious about this part of the world. It would be easy for a student to choose to read chapters on specific countries they may be studying: for instance, Tibet, or Vietnam. Doing so would give that reader a much wider view of that country than is provided by encyclopedia encyclopedia, compendium of knowledge, either general (attempting to cover all fields) or specialized (aiming to be comprehensive in a particular field). Encyclopedias and Other Reference Books articles, for example. And Gargan's journey may inspire YAs to plan their own future journeys into exotic parts of our world. Claire Rosser, KLIATT |
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