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Indlæser... The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's… (original 2017; udgave 2016)af Joshua Hammer (Forfatter)
Detaljer om værketThe Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts af Joshua Hammer (2017)
  
Africa (51) Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. This book was all over the place. The title made me think it was going to focus on the manuscripts and literary heritage of Timbuktu but it spends more time talking about the larger was against AQIM, which, while interesting, isn't what interested me in the book. (  ) SGTCat | Feb 25, 2021 |  The title and publicity for this book focusses on the manuscript collections in Timbuktu and the librarians and owners, and in particular Abdel Kader Haidara, the owner of a large private collection and how they preserved the collections during the occupation of Timbuktu by an alliance of Islamist armed rebels against the Mali government. However, the book itself focusses just as much on the leaders of the various rebel groups and their careers and shifting allegiances in quite bewildering detail. It is telling that there is only illustration in the book while the descriptions of some of the manuscripts call out for illustration. (  ) Robertgreaves | Nov 15, 2020 | The subject matter here is promising- a group of brave librarians and scholars try to save precious Arabic texts from the devilish hands of Al Qaeda. The execution of the story is a bit problematic, uneven and somewhat repetitive but I still found enough to enjoy. I much preferred his later book, The Falcon Thief. ( ) msf59 | Jul 26, 2020 | I definitely bought this book because of its title. Yes, I was once a librarian, and though I didn't start out to be mean and nasty, I quickly was fed up with students who didn't read and with patrons who didn't return their books on time. But I would never, not in a million years, have tried to smuggle priceless manuscripts under the noses of Jihadists and Al-Qaeda terrorists. My geography is pretty poor. A downside to listening to an audible.com book is there are no maps. I suspect that had I read a paper book, there would have been several illustrations of the area. Even so, I am now much more fluent in land-locked African geography than I ever thought to be. Throughout the second half of the book, however, I worried that religious fanatics now know that these treasures exist, and probably are located in the libraries of Timbuktu. Hammer rather leaves the reader in suspense.... The narration was ably handled by Bochmer. His accents (French, English, African languages) rang true. (  ) kaulsu | Jul 17, 2020 | I really wish that I had liked this more. A great initial start of the book eventually flounders when Mr. Hammer starts going into the unrest in the Mali region and how that impacted Timbuktu. I think just a few pages here and there would have been enough to set the scene. Instead the entire book reads like a who's who of Al Qaeda and every military operation in the region. I just lost interest a good 1/3 through the book and never recovered. I really did love reading about the history of Timbuktu, how it was prized in the 16th and 17th centuries as a place for learning. I also loved reading about how Abdel Kader Haidara (the man who through his own travels single handily bought and rescued thousands of ancient manuscripts in order to house them in a library in Timbuktu) initially balked at being tasked with finding manuscripts and becoming obsessed (in a good way) of finding everything out there and safe-keeping it for the generations. If the book had focused more on him than I would have easily given this 5 stars. (  ) ObsidianBlue | Jul 1, 2020 | ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers. In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. Over the past twenty years, journalist Joshua Hammer visited Timbuktu numerous times and is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Haidara's heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali's - and the world's - literary patrimony. Hammer explores the city's manuscript heritage and offers never-before-reported details about the militants' march into northwest Africa. But above all, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is an inspiring account of the victory of art and literature over extremism. No library descriptions found. |
 Google Books — Indlæser...Populære omslagVurderingGennemsnit: (3.55)
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