It's tempting to write off The Lost River as just another adventure story. It certainly has all the trappings of a formulaic action blockbuster--raging rapids, hungry crocodiles, mysterious natives, even the lost Ark of the Covenant. But as veteran river-runner Richard Bangs chronicles his lifelong pursuit of "aqua incognita," he proves a refreshingly introspective adventurer, a thinking man's Indiana Jones. Not content to justify his risky forays onto earth's wildest water with a glib "because it's there," he crafts an intimate journal of his astounding trips and scrutinises the adventure travel industry he helped create.

With a ragtag band of friends and smuggled equipment, Bangs sets out in 1973 to run Ethiopia's untried rivers. But revolution and the tragic death of a friend cause him to quit the country without running the Tekeze, one of Africa's most fearsome tributaries. When he returns to run the virgin river in 1996, the Internet revolution is dawning, and Microsoft (via satellite uplink) and the Turner Corporation (via a ride-along film crew) are among his travel companions. Such fascinating historical contexts might easily have been reduced to Forrest Gump-ish window dressing for Bangs's journeys. Instead, he makes them integral to his story, using anecdotal encounters with Candice Bergen, Haile Selassie, and even Richard (Shaft) Roundtree to gently steep readers in the history of Ethiopia.

As they encounter ecosystems and peoples making first contact with Westerners, Bangs and his companions also explore the ethical and ecological ramifications of adventure travel. But rather than preach a certain course of action, he judiciously presents the various arguments for "conservation" and "progress" and lets readers draw their own conclusions. Though lacking the stylistic verve that Mark Twain or Joseph Conrad bring to the river story, Bangs is clearly a kindred spirit, with lessons well worth pondering and incredible stories to tell. © Amazon.com

British historian, Aileen Kelly's tome is reflects the resurgent debate and conflict between nationalist and liberal camps among post-Soviet political and intellectual elites. Those with a keen interest in the socio-cultural history of Russia and also the Soviet Union of the late 19th and early 20th century will find that the current attitudes toward 19th century Russian intellectuals was the result of distortions on the part of both Soviet and Western historians. The Cold War had made historians distort history.

Kelly starts off with a relatively-small section on liberal intellectuals Isaiah Berlin and Leonard Shapiro, and moves on to the three broad movements in Russian intellectual tradition: Nihilists (both Slavophile and Western) of the 19th century; the conservative and socialist dogmatists of the 19th and early 20th centuries; and, as an alternative to the two, the radical humanists. Elsewhere she investigates the chronological and physical context of these debates and conflicts: the intellectual scene of the 1860s, the populism and radical socialism of the 1870s and 1880s, and the development of Russian urban society within which the various movements and debates took place.

Kelly delves into the differences between criticism of all political movements in Russian society in Fyodor Dostoevsky's literary works and his sympathy toward Slavophiles. The humanism of Leo Tolstoy's fiction is contrasted with the dogmatism of his philosophy and public views. The liberalism in Ivan Turgenev's views and works coexisted with his sympathies with the Nihilists.

Kelly's book suffers from a fallacy though. She uses a large number of both primary and secondary sources, but for some obscure reason leaves out a much-needed bibliography and index. This is something that seems anachronistic with something to do with history. Her assumption that every reader knows and had read everything that he is talking about rings hollow.