This vivid book, the first of many he wrote, tells what happened, from a breakthrough Matterhorn ascent to being jailed for taking forbidden pictures on Gibraltar. "One of the most fascinating books of its kind ever written." (In 1939 the swashbuckler was lost at sea in the Pacific).

    Written in the exuberant, enthusiastic style of Richard Halliburton's The Royal Road to Romance, this epic memoir captures the splendor of nowvanished civilizations, the excitement of unearthing ancient monuments, the chilling terrors of snow-clogged mountain passes, and the parching agony of the desert. Hedin climbs accursed mountains in China, infiltrates Tibet, outwits Torgut bandits, and of course becomes close friends with royalty from Peking to London, including the rulers of both the Russian and British empires. A worldwide bestseller in the 1920s, it today introduces a new generation to a man of exceptional daring and accomplishment. The book is illustrated with 160 of Hedin's own drawings.

    Most people will come to it because of its fugitive reputation as a sea classic, an enchanting story of a voyage in a small boat down the Irish Sea and up the English Channel, a book full of idyllic solitude, of sunsets, storms, oily calms, wet sleeping bags, tide races, tangled ropes and the rest of it. Such readers if they skip judiciously, will manage to find what they want, but they won't be prepared for what "The cruise of the Nona" actually is -----an extraordinary and disturbing can of worms and glory.

    His perilous eight-month journey in 1923 took him around the western edges of the Great Sand Sea to El Obeid in the Sudan, a distance of 2,200 miles, and led him to the discovery of the lost oases of Arkenu and Uweinat at the extreme southwest corner of Egypt. At Uweinat, Hassanein was amazed to find rock drawings of animals, including lions, giraffes, ostriches, and gazelles. He was deep in the trackless desert, but what he had found was evidence of a flourishing human existence ten thousand years ago, and proof that the Sahara was once green. Hassanein’s discovery excited the imaginations of later European explorers such as Ralph Bagnold and Ladislaus Alm?sy, the model for the eponymous character in The English Patient. But Hassanein was there first, traveling by camel with Bedouin guides, encountering the mysterious Senussi brotherhood in Libya, and confirming the existence of the long-forgotten oases. First published in 1925 and long out of print, The Lost Oases is now available for another generation of readers in this new edition, which includes a foreword by author Michael Haag on Hassanein, his life, and his accomplishments. Copiously illustrated with Hassanein’s own photographs, this is a gripping travel narrative by one of Egypt’s most important explorers.