El Dorado And Other Pursuits
  • Published: 28 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473520837
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

El Dorado And Other Pursuits

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
15 Feb 2002
EBook
28 Feb 2015
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'Crème de la crème of world adventuring' - New York Times Book Review

Evan S. Connell explores the quixotic obsession with the new, the hidden, the unattainable that burns in an individual's soul.

Each essay is an extraordinary account of passionate pursuit by legendary explorers, visionaries, and seekers compelled by a singular desire. Here we find Marco Polo, El Dorado, Paracelsus, Columbus, the thousands of children in the Innocents' Crusade, Magellan, Mary Kingsley (a Victorian naturalist, ethnologist, sailor, scholar, and guest of cannibals, and Ibn Batuta (an indefatigable explorer of the fourteenth century whose travels in the Arab world and beyond made 'the journey of Marco Polo look like a stroll around the block').

'There's no end to the list, of course,' Connell adds, 'because gradually it descends from such legendary individuals to ourselves when, as children, obsessed by that same urge, we got permission to sleep in the backyard.'
  • Published: 28 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473520837
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
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About the author

Evan S. Connell

Evan S. Connell, recognised as one of the most important voices in American literature, was the author of seventeen books, including Mrs Bridge, Mr Bridge and the bestselling Son of the Morning Star, his account of Custer's final battle at the Little Big Horn, and his book about the crusades, Deus lo Volt! In 2009 he was nominated for the Man Booker international prize. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and died in 2010, aged 88.

Also by Evan S. Connell

Mr Bridge
Mr Bridge
Mrs Bridge
The White Lantern And Other Pursuits
Deus Lo Volt!
Son Of The Morning Star
See all

Praise for El Dorado And Other Pursuits

Quite simply, a great book... Combining the poet's vision with the narrative sweep of a born storyteller and painstaking historical research, Connell revives the lost sense of awe and wonder that, along with the misery and privation, must have marked these epic voyages of body and mind

Los Angeles Times

A survey of great feats of exploration, a compendium of a lifetime's reading of adventure, a book of wonders, florid history, provisional 'facts' and catchy ironies, laconic heroism and scabrous villainies, cryptic deaths and other endings

New York Times Book Review

Connell is one of those exuberant American historians who believe so passionately that everything must be fun that the reader sometimes pines for a piece of dry gravitas. Nevertheless, these essays, on a theme of exploration, contain enough rattling yarns to silence even this cynic

Herald