About this title: In this moving autobiography, Beryl Markham describes growing up in East Africa with her horse-breeder father, who taught her to care for and train the animals for racing. In her 20s, Markham discovered flying, and worked as an airborne deliverer of supplies and mail. In 1936, she became the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Ernest Hemingway called the memoir "a bloody wonderful book." With photographs.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: 24th Printing
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: North Point Press
Date Published: 1993
ISBN-13:9780865471184ISBN:0865471185
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Book in good condition. Slight crease to cover Shelf id mark on binding. Daily shipping. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 294 p. Audience: General/trade. Topics Africa; Aviation; Biography; Biography & Autobiogaphy; Biography & Autobiography; Feminine; Great Britain; History; Markham, Beryl; Non-Fiction; Personal Memoirs; Transportation; Women; Women air pilots read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: North Point Press
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780865471184ISBN:0865471185
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Solid book with clean pages, cover shows shelf & edge wear, small stain on side & bottom edge. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 294 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"One of the best written books that you can ever hope to read. It is pure poetry. You won't simply read this book, you will feel yourself with the author as a child of the early 1900's, hunting in the jungles of Africa with the Masai. You, as a little girl, will fight off a lion. You will be one of the first woman to learn to fly. You will see Africa as it was in the early 20th century, with its plains full of herds and flocks of the most magnificent and ferocious creatures on earth. You will see its mountains, lakes, deserts. You will be there to see all of Africa in its still untouched majesty. In the 1930's in the Rift Valley of Africa, you will train and come to understand horses as you never thought a human could, and then you will get to attend the most exciting horse race you have ever witnessed. I loved this book and will always keep it in my library to read and re-read. Give yourself a treat one of these cool fall nights, and sit down in a cozy chair with your feet up, light a fire (but only if you have a fireplace), pick up this book and float away to another time and place."
"This is a sleeper of a book. It was originally written in the 1950s and languished in obscurity and subsequently went out of print. In the 1980s North Point Press got wind of it and release it again.
West with the Night is an autobiography of a feisty girl born in England but raised by her single father in British East Africa (now Kenya). Beryl Markham made friends with Masai warriors, learned how to hunt with the, as the first woman with a pilot's license in Africa and a pioneer horse trainer there as well. She is best known for being the first woman to fly solo from East to West across the Atlantic Ocean.
To say that Markham was an unconventional person is a gross understatement. She was a little coarse. She was self indulgent. A very entertaining read."
"Published originally in 1942, this remarkable memoir of a young English woman naturalized to worlds not hers tells a tale worth rereading. Markham's father brought her as a young child to a farm near Nairobi where he came to raise and race horses. This great love he shared with his daughter who imbibed the breeding of thoroughbreds amid the untamed and often untouched terroritories at her doorstep just at the edge of Western civilization in East Africa. The child's native independence carried her into young adulthood and a career training and racing horses. Then a chance encounter with an intrepid English aviator intent on entering the nascent commercial air business in roadless Africa carried her into the air. She took from her new love of flying both a livelihood and a new perspective on the vast continent she called home. With white hunters - guides to wealthy clients on safari - she flew spotting missions for elephants. She delivered mail and all manner of things, people, and aid across trackless territories. She flew to England and back several times in a day when such journeys took at least a week even when Fascist administrators in Italian territories along the way quickly cleared passage. On the last such flight she recounts she departed Africa to stay in England. There she eventually entered a trans-Atlantic air challenge to become the first person to fly the north Atlantic from England to the U.S. Prevailing westerly headwinds and the limitations even of the best aircraft of the mid 1930s made this a dangerous voyage. But she made the crossing, crash-landing in Nova Scotia. From there she spent years in the U.S. eventually returning to Africa. But the real joy of the book is the writer's persona penned in the tales of her African youth with startling style, charm and insight. As Hemingway wrote a friend about the book, "I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.""
"This really is a lovely book. The writing is excellent, who would have thought that a 1930's horse trainer and aviator could write so beautifully. The descriptions of Africa and flying are affectionate and vivid, and make this a joy of a read. Beryl Markham - friend of Denys Finch Hatton and Baron Blixen (think out of Africa) is someone who lived a full and remarkable life - only a small part of which is written about in this book - and who I now want to read more about. Beryl Markham's life in Africa was certainly not without incident, and the escapades she recounts here include being attacked by a lion as a child, getting into a dodgy situation with a bull elephant, and watching a horse she had trained in a very exciting horse race. I found this an enourmously readable book. I loved it. Thank you Isabel for letting me borrow it : )"
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