I read this as a child and it has stayed with me these many years since, along with a feel for the area and a fascination for the deserts of Central Asia and Mongolia. Rereading it as an adult, it is just as engaging. A marvelous story, well told, it provides a real sense of "place." Years after reading it, when I finally came upon pictures of the people and the area in another context, they all looked EXACTLY as I had imagined they would.

I've been looking for this book for 15 years and hopefully just found it. I assume it was originally intended as a children's story, but the story is so subtle, and the characters so captivating, that I have no hesitation in recommending it to a general audience. Christian, a missionary's son, and his friend Big Tiger skip school to fly their kites near one of Peking's main gates. Since there isn't enough wind to do the kites justice they accept a ride from a trainful of soldiers. Unfortunately there is a problem getting off... and before they know it, Big Tiger and Christian find themselves trekking through 1930s (?) Mongolia, encountering nomads, lamas, bandits, princes, and scoundrels, digging for buried treasure, picking up Mongolian customs, and learning the wonderful comfort that comes with the phrase "It can't be helped". If you've got a copy keep [a] good hold of it, is my advice.

Sarangerel writes from a bright, positive spirit of generosity and love for the ancient tradition. This is a wonderful book, as is her first. It is full of really great stuff. If you are interested in learning shamanistic techniques, get Sarangerel's books. They're beautiful. We have much to thank her for.

i attended a workshop given by sarangerel in march 2001. she would make your hair stand on end with her authenticity and power. this is the real stuff.

Between the Hammer and the Anvil? Chinese and Russian Policies in Outer Mongolia, 1911-1921 by Thomas E.Ewing

Melvyn Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall's anthropological study of a Mongolian herding community, presents an intimate portrait of life on the steppes and the dramatic changes these people have undergone through the previous seventy years of Communism. In the introduction the authors provide a brief overview of Mongolian history from the conquests of the twelfth century khans to the development of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party under the Soviet System. While continually emphasizing the nomadic herding economy, Goldstein and Beall's book is really a close look at the lives of individuals and families and how they survive both this harsh climate and the changing political and economic scene.

Goldstein and Beall first layout a the problem of survival in the difficult environmental conditions on the steppes and the tenacity, illustrating the point with the tale of a herder found frozen to death as he crawled toward his home, less than a kilometer from safety. It is the livestock, contend the authors, that are the wealth and the security of these nomads. Herds are portable wealth on four legs of which no portion is wasted and each animal fulfills a specific function in the provision of basic needs: food, clothing, transportation. "Climate drives the annual cycle of the nomads life" and determines the survival of both herds and herder.

Goldstein and Beall stayed in the herding community of Moost in the Altai Mountains. Particularly detailed descriptions of traditional Mongolian hospitality--the exchange of snuff, the serving of milk-tea and "hospitality" foods--give a warm picture of an extremely outgoing and friendly people. The authors also give detailed descriptions of daily activities: slaughtering a sheep, making cheese, drying milk curds. Most such work is part of a continual preparation for surviving the extreme winters. Even ritual actions demonstrate the difficulty of life on these steppes. Goldstein and Beall attended several hair-cutting ceremonies for Mongolian children. This ritual first haircut does not take place until a child has reached the age of four or five, demonstrating that it is likely to survive childhood.

One of the questions the authors had for the Mongols was how their lives had changed under the Communist collectives and how they viewed the new free-market economy. Surprisingly, the answer was generally a noncommittal shrug. When the collective system was first forced upon the Mongols by the Communist government in 1927, herders slaughtered their animals rather than turn them over to government ownership. A less direct approach was taken by the government which, through excessive taxation, forced the independent herders to turn to the collectives for survival in the same way that tribes had traditionally banded together to survive adversity. The collectives, called negdels, took care of the business end of marketing the herds and providing social services. Now men in positions of local authority fear that herders will not be able to fend for themselves in a free-market economy, while the herders not understanding those concepts go on as they always have, bartering in their small local markets for whatever they need and living off their herds. Since there was no concept of land ownership before the collectives, the collective leaders divided negdels along a traditional boundaries of range areas--adapting the communist collective to the nomadic lifestyle rather than the other way around.

Goldstein and Beall also describe in detail the mobile housing of the Mongols, the traditional wooden-framed, felt-covered ger or yurt. Extremely portable and highly versatile, the ger is suited to the cold, high-wind climate of the steppes. Also significant to the nomadic lifestyle is the horse. The authors quote a thirteenth-century Chinese historian who said, "The Mongols are born in the saddle and grow up on horseback; they learn to fight by themselves as they spend all their life hunting the year-round" --an observation that is still true today. Along with horses the Mongols herd yaks, goats, sheep, and sometimes camels. The work of herding is no different under free-market economics than it was under the negdels or in the old tribal systems and women and men work side-by-side. The difference now is primarily in the private ownership of the animals. Where, under communism, the collective marketed the animals and made decisions about what animals to breed, the herder must now make these choices. Mongols understood the negdel system because "the collective economy incorporated important components of the traditional system of Mongol nomadic pastoralism."

According to Goldstein and Beall, some of the major benefits under Communism includesd education in rural areas and a decent health care system, benefits that Mongols fear will disappear under a freemarket economy. While the health care might not compare to hospital standards in the United States is was remarkable that the women of Moost enjoyed not only free prenatal care, maternity leave, and hospital childbirth under socialism, but also received a government stipend for each child at birth and again at sixmonths of age. Government pensions for women at age 50-55 (or as early as age 36 if they had four or more children) and for men at age 55-60 provide a surety for old age that helped to raise the standard of living for the herders.

Not only is this book a must in any scholarly study of Mongolian Culture, it is a fascinating and well-written text. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Central Asian culture.

The book The Dinosaur Project, by Wayne Grady, describes the joint Canadian and Chinese paleontological project starting in 1985. During the course of this project, Canadian researchers worked alongside Chinese researchers in the paleontological cornucopia of the Gobi Desert, as well as Chinese workers working with Canadians in the also fruitful Southern Alberta Badlands and the Canadian High Arctic. The field areas are so harsh and the characters are so interesting that this book could easily be made into a Spielberg movie. The start of the book immediately draws in the reader by describing the history behind the project. This project is referred to as the largest and most ambitious modern dinosaur hunting expedition ever mounted. It detailed the networking of the Chinese and Canadian colleagues over several years at various conferences until the project eventually became a reality. Narrative style keeps the reader interested as the paleontogists go into extreme conditions in the field, and as their finds are put into perspective relative to contemporary paleontogical dogma. This book was surprisingly gripping for a bone book. It covered many important paleontological theories, but kept the jargon to a minimum. Quotations and anecdotes were often used to relay how science works as well; science both as an abstract methodology and also the reality of working in extreme conditions. One quotation in particularly was well-worded "science is a way of thinking; it's how we move from what we think we don't know to what we think we know" (Dale Russel). The anecdotal style of the book is what really makes it well-written.

I enjoy this book because it is enthusiastic, well-researched, thorough, compassionate and, to top it off, wonderful to look at. Like the editorial review says, the Gobi is not all sand and camels, though those were a ball too. The Gobi is ice and mountain and shaggy yak/cow/things and people and children and horses and felt comforters and fermented mare's milk and dinosaur bones and so much more. This little book captures all of that and more in 64 well organized pages.

I have a soft spot for this book, too, because I bought it from the author, Bernd Steinhauer-Burkart, in the Juulchin Gobi ger camp near the Gurvansaikhan National Park where I had seen so many of the things his book describes. He winced "too many photos", meaning that this detailed work had too much cost in photos for the pricing, but I don't think he would have considered his job complete with any fewer of these glimpses into an amazing culture. Truly familiar with his subject, he took over one hundred of the photos in the book. The reader gains immeasurably and the author has done this guidebook right for the both the traveler who walks the blue ice in the green valleys, and for someone who only dreams of it.

The author's somewhat standard travelogue visit to Mongolia is escalated to excellence through two key things: the detail he provides about a little-documented country, and the insight that bridges Western concepts of society and natural beauty with those of Mongolia.

It may help a great deal to be interested in Mongolia or Central Asia before you pick up this book, but if you have even the slightest interest in the area Man will draw you in completely. While at first you might consider reading the book to learn about Mongolia without going there, Man paints in this blank corner of most people'e world view so well that you wish for much more contact with the country and its people.

Filled with Boston and urban impressions and vivid imagery is this blend of free verse and essay, which provides notable discourses on many urban themes: "The record-player's squeak/creak of the icebox door/sparrows in the alley/Delft tiles rim the fireplace/dark house that Boston smell/camphor chests, salt fog, drizzle." Enjoy a wealth of such intimate images.

IF you are interested in Mongolia's early history (Genghis, Ogodei, Kublai, the Mongols, etc.) this isn't the one you would want. However, this book has lots of information from beginning of 1900s to 1945.

Baabar's Twentieth Century Mongolia is one of the best books ever written on Mongol history. This is the sole available work that not only deals with Chingis-Khanite period till modern day Mongolia, but is also written by a Mongol person. The book would be a great help for one who is doing a research on Mongol history and people. Not only a great writer, Mr. Baabar is a leading democratic revolutionist and a respectable politician in our country.

This book is one of the best history books i've ever seen. You guys should take a good look on it in order to achieve core elements about Mongolia. This book will help you to know what exactly Mongolia is and Mongolians are.

I found Lawless's book of Mongolia both funny and insightful. It makes you want to travel and experience life and it definitely makes you remember to stop and smell the 'roses'.

Not normally a reader of travel books, this one was a gift from a very dear friend. Now this is one of my favorite gifts for giving.

I hope she writes more, I thouroughly enjoy her wit and style.

I concur with the other reviewers. This is a well written and humorous book about life in Mongolia after the Soviets left. Oddly enough Mongolians have reversed the urban trend and have moved back to the countryside and their nomadic way of life to survive.

I found Jill Lawless' Wild East to be an unusual work of travel writing. She did not just make a pit stop in Mongolia, but lived there for two years as editor of the UB Post newspaper -- a feisty English language newspaper. This is a work in the tradition of the great engaged journalists, a ballsy (without the balls) Hemmingway for the 21st century. Her writing is wise, minus the naive first impressions of many travellers -- it is Mongolia from the inside. Wild East is a reality check on current debates over globalization. Mongolia is a country where even McDonalds dares to not go. Lawless digs deep into the country's own version of the 60s, as Mongolian's lustily embraced there new-found freedoms in the 90s. She takes us across the country, from the remote Gobi desert, to border clashes with Russian Tuva. She is especially good at covering the dynamic and chaotic world of Mongolian tabloid newspapers, including the rise and fall of "Hot Blanket" magazine.