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The Conquest of the Sahara - 2nd Edition by Douglas Porch (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- In The Conquest of the Sahara, Douglas Porch tells the story of France's struggle to explore and dominate the great African desert at the turn of the century.Focusing on the conquest of the Ahaggar Tuareg, a Berber people living in a mountain area in central Sahara, he goes on to describe the bizarre exploits of the desert's explorers and conquerors and the incompetence of the French military establishment.
- About the Author: Douglas Porch is a military historian and the author of The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II.
- 352 Pages
- History, Africa
Description
Book Synopsis
In The Conquest of the Sahara, Douglas Porch tells the story of France's struggle to explore and dominate the great African desert at the turn of the century.
Focusing on the conquest of the Ahaggar Tuareg, a Berber people living in a mountain area in central Sahara, he goes on to describe the bizarre exploits of the desert's explorers and conquerors and the incompetence of the French military establishment. Porch summons up a world of oases, desert forts and cafés where customers paid the dancer by licking a one-franc piece and sticking it on her forehead.
Review Quotes
"The Conquest of the Sahara is almost everything a book should be-an adornment for your home, a blitz of information for your brain, a diversion and a hoot, and, finally, balm for your soul." --The Los Angeles Times
"A bravura account...Readers with a taste for exotic popular history will savor Porch's wry sense of irony." --Newsweek "In this admirable book, Douglas Porch sets the record straight." --The Washington Post Book World "Porch is knowledgeable. . .and a fine writer with a dramatic style . . .[he] has done a superb job." --The Boston Globe "[Porch] presents a vivid blow-by-blow account of how this arid, inhospitable land was penetrated at a terrible cost." --The San Francisco ChronicleAbout the Author
Douglas Porch is a military historian and the author of The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II. He is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.