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In 1999, Conrad Anker found the body of George Mallory on Mount Everest, casting an entirely new light on the mystery of the lost explorer. On 8 June 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew 'Sandy' Irvine were last seen climbing towards the summit of Everest. The clouds closed around them and they were lost to history, leaving the world to wonder whether or not they actually reached the summit - some 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay. On 1 May 1999, Conrad Anker, one of the world's foremost mountaineers, made the momentous discovery - Mallory's body, lying frozen into the scree at 27,000 feet on Everest's north face. Recounting this day, the authors go on to assess the clues provided by the body, its position, and the possibility that Mallory had successfully climbed the Second Step, a 90-foot sheer cliff that is the single hardest obstacle on the north face. This is a remarkable story of a charming and immensely able man, told by an equally talented modern climber. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good read
This book chronicles the expedition that went to Mount Everest to find answers to the mystery of early climber George Mallory. It is a refreshingly different book about Mount Everest as most people climb it for themselves and the top of the world reasons.

facinating
I have always enjoyed reading non-fiction and especially those concerning exploration.I found "The Lost Explorer" exactly as I anticipated.It was full of information and anticipation, even though I read it many years after George Mallory was found, I still was spellbound on every page.Well written and well researched by the actual finder of George Mallory! ... Read more

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In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD the Middle East saw the empires of the Romans and Parthians give way to the the Byzantines and the Sasanians. This book follows the subsequent development of Islamic political control and examines the interactions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. ... Read more

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Groundworks gives accounts of the actual processes of working with individuals in six major schools of Somantics by either the creator of the method itself or a leading teacher of the method. The creators are Robert Hall of Lomi School, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen of Body-Mind Centering, and Emilie Conrad Da'oud of Continuum. Leading teachers of methods include Michael Salveson on Rolfing, Elizabeth Beringer on Feldenkrais work, and Darcy Elman on F. M. Alexander Technique. Each therapist describes how he or she approaches and diagnoses a patient's problem, how he or she determines what and where to work, and the progress of a session. Each therapist shows the complexity of working with somatic processes, as well as the reward, for client and therapist both. ... Read more

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This new edition of Conrad's masterpiece, newly and extensively annotated, together with the earlier work upon which it is based, features more than 70 pages of illuminating critical commentary and notes. "The Congo Diary," the record of Conrad's own 1890 journey up the Congo River has previously been available only in scholarly editions and journals. Map. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (427)

Diminishing rewards
This is the first book I have read of Joseph Conrad."The Heart of Darkness" has a beautiful start, and Conrad is a true master of words. But around the half way point the plot begins to fizzle.Conrad goes off on a tangent that differs from the main story.Then pursues a reverence for a character, Kurtz, that is unsupported.The ending is a eulogy for Kurtz, who was barely in the story.Perhaps there are historical references of the time that I am unaware of that would support the story, but standing alone it is only half a book.I am looking forward to reading more of Joseph Conrad however.His poetic pros are amazing, inspiring.

Going Native ...
Joseph Conrad wrote this classic novella on the "clash of civilizations"; or, much more appropriately, a clash of non-civilizations more than 110 years ago. It was based on Conrad's brief experience working in the then Belgian Congo.There is at least partial validity to comparative studies on the respective merits and de-merits of the various colonial powers, and in most cases Belgian rule has ranked near the bottom, reflected by a brutal rule dedicated solely to enriching the ruling power, with virtually no benefit to the native people. This book could only help reinforce that assessment.

English was Conrad's third language, yet he mastered it better than virtually all native-English speakers. His prose is rich and dense. Along with Melville, his depictions of the sea in its varying conditions are evocative, and his novel Typhoon and Other Tales (Oxford World's Classics) is a classic to the awesome power of the ocean. In this novella, there are strong descriptive passages of the river when the boat is anchored in the Thames estuary, and Marlow tells the tale of his encounter with Kurtz, along with his brief stint in the Congo, in the style of a flashback.

The "heart" of the book, as it were, is the interactions between two extremely different cultures, and the exploitation of one by the other. It is the late 19th Century, London is the capital of the largest empire the world has ever known, yet Conrad makes the point that a mere 2,000 years or so earlier, if a Roman trireme had ventured up the Thames, it would have been going into "the heart of darkness," on the very outer edges of its empire, in similar circumstances to one venturing up the Congo River today.

In Marlow's flashback tale, there are passages which are deeply empathetic to the natives bearing the "burden of white men," and there are other passages that are certainly racist by today's standard, so one or the other could be cited to prove a thesis.There is a dramatic buildup to Marlow's meeting with Kurtz, with immense praise for the most effective agent of the company tempered with hints of certain irregularities, as though he might have been out in "the bush" too long, and "gone native." It turns out that he was a demi-god within the company, providing far more ivory through his unorthodox methods than other agents, but to the natives he had become a god, in part, because he adopted their ways. It is very much a tale of power, and its corrupting influences. This book was adapted as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, and starred Marlon Brando as Kurtz, in Apocalypse Now: Redux a movie I truly detested since I felt it had distorted the essence of the American involvement in Vietnam. Don't know if it has been adapted as a metaphor for the corporate world, but I could imagine it ringing truer there.

There is a poignant scene at the end, in which Marlow must try to convey the circumstances of Kurtz's demise to his fiancé.And reminiscent of Paul in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations), when confronted with a similar task, the only proper solution is to lie.

Brilliant prose, rich in insights on the human condition, this novella, particularly on the second read, retains its appropriate designation as a 5-star classic.

Don't dive in...
This is one of the greatest novels ever written. The problem is it is so layered that it is hard to just pick up and read. I strongly suggest purchasing "CliffsNotes on Conrad's Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer" by Daniel Moran to assist you in figuring out the depth of this great novel. Read them both together and I am sure you will come away with a better reading experience and appreciation for this masterpiece.

Heart and Mind
I recently re-read the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness, a perennial classic and the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Having first read this powerful piece in high school, there was much I had forgotten. I am glad to have revisited it. This time it really hit home: just how relative its themes of greed, corruption, and redemption are in today's world. We may draw a comparison to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the world's hunger for oil and its consequences, or even to the megalomania we've seen recently that has been the ruin of US and other market economies.


Conrad's story takes place in 19th century colonial Africa; a virtual free-for-all for holding companies and the like scrambling to lay claims on precious minerals (gold, silver) and other natural resources (ivory, slaves) in its vast untapped interior. The problem for these greed machines was finding personnel willing or ignorant enough to brave the "darkness": wild animals, disease, uncivilized tribal societies (some cannibalistic). Kurtz was one such individual who travels downriver into the thicket to set up a station for his employers, but experiences a taste of totemic worship, he being the totem. His sad tale is told by Marlow, a "seaman" and a "wanderer" who was employed by the same administrative company as Kurtz.

"...their administration," says Marlow "was merely a squeeze and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."

Marlow relates his experiences on the vast interior river (Congo?) which culminate in his search, along with the company manager and a native crew, for the elusive Kurtz who had terminated communication with the civilized world months before. After finally finding an ailing Kurtz downriver, Marlow's own obsession with just listening to this fellow comes to fruition in a haze of disenchantment. Delusion and dementia, along with his adoring natives, have claimed him, But Marlow, at the urging of the manager, must retrieve Kurtz (and his ivory) to the company's outpost. It is on the way back, after a reckless escape, that Kurtz will utter those infamous and harrowing last words: "The horror, the horror."


For me Kurtz represents the iconic Soldier led into the great Darkness of some war (Iraq) or material venture (oil) perpetrated by the "conquerors" (guess who). In this analogy, Kurtz's ultimate madness relates to the current epidemic of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) we see in our troops returning from the war zones.Unfortunately Kurtz's "horror" is being experienced, in some manner, by thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan vets today. These are just disillusioned kids returning home to their families without jobs, without limbs, without peace of mind; with nightmares. So who is Marlow, in this tale? Is he us?


In Heart of Darkness Marlow finally must face Kurtz's grieving fiancee back in London. She entreats him to assure her of Kurtz's final moments, since he was, must have been, her loved one's friend.

"Your were with him -- to the last?" she asks.

"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words...' I stopped in a fright.

"'Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want --I want -- something -- something -- to -- to live with.'

Marlow is suddenly faced with a dilemma. And so are we. Will we lie as Marlow does or will we face the ugly truth?

Pseudointellectual myth
Before reading this book I had just read Conrad's Outcast of the Islands.Which was really quite good...this book was horrible and yet gets all the praise? This book confirms my belief that most authors should retire at a certain point. Even more so that the world is full of pseudo-intellectuals who see "depth" in anything abstruse that we dummies can't appreciate.Conrad must have have had too much praise go to his head or alcohol or something.The story is hard to readyou draw nothing deep from it, it has none of the beautiful nature descriptions his earlier books had. He must have needed rent money or tried some avant garde thing while drug addled.How utterly unbelievable that this book is famous.Thank God it was short. ... Read more

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This book focuses on Conrad's Malay fiction and the way in which it deals with cross-cultural encoutners, cultural identity and cultural dislocation. Issues of race and gender are to the fore. There are a number of books which deal with Conrad and Empire, but Robert Hampson's book carves its own niche by taking the arguments of others further.
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Briefer than most texts on the topic, this book accessibly explores the interrelationships among theory, policy, and practice to provide a comprehensive understanding of both the historical foundations and the practical world of juvenile justice. The Sixth Edition, now published by SAGE, is updated throughout covering topics such as the history of juvenile justice, legal considerations in juvenile justice, theory and policy in juvenile justice, and current realities in the practice of juvenile justice. The book’s unique blend of theory, policy, and practice, coupled with a straightforward writing style and comprehensive ancillary package makes it a must-have for students and practitioners alike.
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Customer Reviews (4)

Primary Sources Tell All
This book is a giant collection of primary sources collected and edited by Robert Conrad pertaining to black slavery in Brazil. We used this book in my Slaves Societies of the Americas history course and it was an invaluable asset to my research. I had learned almost nothing about slavery in Brazil prior to reading this book and it has truly showed me the horrors of the institution of slavery. Having been mostly educated on slavery in the US South, I was shocked to discover that there were vastly more slaves in Brazil and that the Brazilian slavery system lasted practically until 1890. This is a must read for those who wish to gain a better understanding of what slavery in the Americas was truly like.

children of god' fire
this is a highly technical book with excellent historical references and obvious good research. Very educational and informative. It is very readable. A word of caution: some of the commentaries reflect US or English mindset bias, i.e. a hint of a moral superiority, unwarranted, most probably unintentional and unconsciously done, but frequently encountered in books written in the English language about other cultures, which may offend other native language speakers.

The best that I have read on
slavery in Brazil! This book is very good! It backs everything up with documentation and it shows how cruel of an institution slavery was in Brazil. It also gives the reader a good idea on the scope of slavery in Brazil. 40% of the Africans transported to the new world went to Brazil. This was a country that was totally dependent on African slave labor.

Indispensable Brazilian Slavery Research Text
Composed of myriad primary sources, Conrad prefaces each document with a description, date and summary of the following text. Organized topically and then chronologically within each section, the format perfectly suits the researcher. Interestingly, (for my purposes) the text contains numerousaccounts of quilombos in Palmares, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and others. Thedocuments date from 1550 (approx.) through the final proclamation endingslavery in Brazil in 1888.Outstanding research tool, as well as aninteresting read for those wishing to learn, first hand, about slavery inBrazil. ... Read more

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Mark Twain was right
Mark Twain once said, "Analyzing humor is a lot like dissecting a frog.It's an interested process, but it kills the frog!"The same can be said for analyzing literature, which is mostly what Mr. Karl did in his book.

For my own self, I very much enjoy biographies and have read a lot of them.Literature being a special interest, I have read a fair number of biographies on writers.Peter Ackroyd's book on Dickens and Jackson J. Benson's book on Steinbeck are nice door-stopper size books (the kind I favor), but unlike Mr. Karl, Acrkroyd and Benson wrote fascinating books.Mr. Karl spent the most of his 900 plus pages of text in trying to determine where Conrad got his ideas.And accomplished nothing!

I cannot tell you how many tedious discussions this book had attempting to determine where Conrad got his inspiration for one book or another.And the bulk of these discussions had the same tagline:"But this is all speculation."THEN WHY BRING IT UP!!!!

I really don't know why I waded through the entire book, but if you try it and find that it's a bit tedious, stop!It does NOT get better!

I do now know the details of Conrad's life, and found that part of things most interesting (hence the one star), but this is not the biography I would recommend for those who want to read about Conrad.I really hate the idea of writing a review that slams a book, but ye gods!

Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
lived as a child amongst revolutionaries in Poland,
but read about the sea and dreamt of wild adventures.
He watched his mother die in exile in Siberia
and his father follow her to the grave soon thereafter.

Seasons of the mind can be taught to rule the heart.

Joseph Conrad survived a life of tedium and hair breadth escapes at sea,
but dreamt of understanding what drives and saddles men's souls.
He is rumored to have killed a man in a barroom brawl

and then escaped to England to take on a new identity.

There is very little time for true understanding.

Father and author Conrad lived quietly in a London suburb
and wrote in epic stretches that left him sleeping on the floor.
One day he emerged from his writing studio
and did not recognize his own son in the hallway.

Life stumbles on through fields of crowded emotion.
There is no loss of honor in fearing life's many deaths. ... Read more

Product Description
Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair between Heyst and Lena begins with her release, but the relationship shifts as Lena struggles to save Heyst from detachment and isolation. Featuring arguably the most interesting hero created by Conrad, "Victory" is both a compelling tale of adventure and a perceptive study of the power of love. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

A Unique Reading Experience
I will in all likelihood remember "Victory" as one of the more inconsistent reads I've ever encountered, not in terms of tone, style or plot but in terms of my fluctuating interest in the tale Conrad spun and what he wanted to say with it. Often I felt myself pushed away by a lumbering pace and wooden caricatures to the outer ionosphere of reader absorption, nearing a point where the thin gravity of my interest in its grander themes was the only thing keeping me from snapping off into orbit and relegating the book unfinished to the dusty shelves. Then, the book would pull me back in by way of a beautifully phrased summation of Heyst's life or philosophy, which is what I seemed to admire and/or connect with most about "Victory". In fact, my problem with the first third of the book was not knowing more about Heyst - far too many pages are used up on Schomberg and the villains, who to me felt more goofy than menacing.

The book's characterizations also dip in and out of authenticity and humanity. Perhaps we are meant to feel detached from Heyst for much of the story, unable to truly "touch" him, as it were. But the girl Lena and his Chinese island companion Wang are, for the most part, two-dimensional, every once in a while popping into the third-dimension albeit all-too-briefly, yet just enough to keep my hand turning the pages. I also found the presence of the strange wildman Pedro completely inexplicable and rather campy, which served further to undermine the villains' menace.

The novel retains very hearty, muscular prose throughout. It's regrettable that Conrad's beautiful line-by-line style, in conjunction with a very promising premise, wasn't married to fuller, more believable characters and better pacing.

Capitulation
I suppose it is rather a commonplace to find an author you love and set out to read all his works until you chance across one of them that is not so very good at all, that seems at times as if it were written by some other, less magisterial, author and are taken aback:Such is the case with me, Joseph Conrad and this book.

I shall not even attempt a plot summary because a) The other reviewers have belaboured it to death and, b) It's embarrassingly silly and lacking in all subtlety, pace to all who found the "thriller" aspects here so exciting.There is also the issue of racialism here so pervasively thrust upon the reader, with nearly every other page containing lines such as, "A meditation is always - in a white man, at least - more or less an interrogative exercise."Such constant lack of nuance - in a writer, at least - is more or less the death of him as an artist. Some of the reviews here made me laugh at their attempts to dismiss all this.Where, this reader wants to ask, to beseech, is the stylistic atavism of, say, Lord Jim and Conrad's other great books which cloak whatever such notions Conrad may or may not have possessed himself in the mystery and deeps of time?

The only redeeming feature to the book is Conrad's prose, which still sings, especially in the - astutely noticed by others - passages reminiscent of The Tempest, "The islands are very quiet.One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness."Beautiful, no?

Still, I wish Conrad had plonked this narrative - so unworthy of him - full fathom five - into such a sea, without murmur or regret.

Never underestimate the power of calumny
that is an additional message i got from this very readable, chilling book. Other reviewers have already touched upon many aspects of this book, so i won't replicate. One of the most illuminating books i have read, and i read this about 15 years ago.

A page-turner, possibly Conrad's only
This is a good one. Of Conrad's novels, only the equally fascinating (albeit tougher going) Chance is more maligned. But Victory, which is not a great deal less audacious than the earlier proto-modernist illuminations of Nostromo and Lord Jim, is also Conrad's leanest, most titillating and romantic fiction, an extrapolation and mythic abstraction of the latter half of Lord Jim. The broad strokes of the abstraction conceal a considerable blackening of Conrad's heart since the early masterpieces: there are shades of The Waste Land in this Paradise. This is, after all, the only Conrad novel in which anyone has sex - and yet it is also the Conrad novel with the bleakest ending.

A Dark and Tormented Island Tale
Victory: An Island Tale is, of course, one of Conrad's classic novels and deserves to be among the great books of the English language, nevertheless I found this work to be uneven and in some ways disappointing.This is hard to explain without spoiling but I'll try.Until the final episodes Victory: An Island Tale is brilliant, absorbing, and disturbing, and of course Conrad's unsurpassed prose is a marvel.The final, episodes, however, are weird, extremely unsettling, and finally obscure and unconvincing.Some passages were simply incomprehensible to me.It all became too highly derived, symbolic, Jamesian, and despite this, in places, crude and vulgar.Of course, these same reservations are standard in Conrad criticism by the experts according to the very helpful introduction in the Modern Library edition that I read.But there it is:The ending is not worthy of Conrad.

Also, aromas of racism and sexism waft around and from this book.I can understand this in the context in which it was written and the context of the story, and I can tune it out or bracket it for the most part.I worry, though, at the same time how complicit I am.Despite the racism and sexism, Conrad has a fundamentally universally human and sympathetic attitude for underdogs, outcasts, the oppressed, and disenchanted which makes his works, and especially this work, so engaging and tends to overshadow the slimier aspects.

The conversation between Schomberg and Ricardo from about page 97 to about 132 is the best part of the novel and the part I enjoyed the most.It is brilliant, funny, insightful, and trenchant.Conrad gets to air some of his social criticism in a very clever way and spin some wild yarns--and in the mouth of a villain!And, by the way, the editor missed mentioning the Nietzschean influences that are evident throughout, but especially in this conversation.

More about the Modern Library edition:As I mentioned the introduction by Peter Lancelot Mallios is worth reading and useful.The notes are for the most part very informative and explain some obscure references.Some of the notes are silly--too much is made of biblical references and derivations from other authors.A map of the area (Indonesia) with locations is included right on the first page.I would recommend this edition. ... Read more

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This timely study offers a radical rereading of Conrad's work in light of contemporary theories of masculinity. Drawing on feminism, gay studies, film theory and literary theory, the author shows that Conrad's fiction, even as it reflects certain assumptions of its day about gender roles, offers striking insights into the instability of the "masculine." The book explores the relationship of masculinity with imperialism, modernity, the visual and the body in a wide range of Conrad's less-known fiction. ... Read more

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This bibliographical study records a wealth of significant references connecting Joseph Conrad to American writers (and vice versa) and illuminating his influence on their work. It lists and fully annotates any book or essay that discusses the relationship between Conrad and American writers. Chapters deal with Conrad's relation to writers ranging from James Fenimore Cooper to Ernest Hemingway. The final section examines Conrad's influence on a number of modern American writers, in addition to his works portrayed by American filmmakers and his visit to America. The indexes list the authors in the bibliography, American writers and their works in relation to Conrad, and Conrad's own works. A concise chronology of Conrad's life and an introductory essay surveying the findings of the bibliography and assessing their significance appear at the beginning of the volume. ... Read more