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The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan, by Ben Macintyre
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The riveting story that inspired Kipling's classic tale and a John Huston movie
The true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, has never been told before. Soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveler and writer, Josiah Harlan wanted to be a king, with all the imperialist hubris of his times. In an amazing twenty-year journey around Central Asia, he was variously employed as surgeon to the Maharaja of Punjab, revolutionary agent for the exiled Afghan King, and then commander-in-chief of the Afghan armies. In 1838, he set off in the footsteps of Alexander the Great across the Hindu Kush and forged his own kingdom, only to be ejected from Afghanistan a few months later by the invading British.
Using a trove of newly-discovered documents, Harlan's own unpublished journals, and with a revised Preface detailing the unexpected discovery of Harlan's descendents, Ben Macintyre's The Man Who Would Be King tells the astonishing tale of the man who would be the first and last American king.
- Sales Rank: #1047213 in Books
- Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published on: 2005-05-04
- Released on: 2005-04-14
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .84" w x 5.50" l, .95 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
While many know Sean Connery as "The Man Who Would Be King," few know 19th-century maverick Josiah Harlan, whose adventures probably inspired John Huston's version of Kipling's tale. But the research of British journalist Macintyre (The Englishman's Daughter) gives readers both Harlan's story and a thought-provoking perspective on the history of superpower intervention in Afghanistan. Born to a Pennsylvania Quaker family in 1799, the self-educated Harlan studied Greek and Roman history before becoming a Freemason and shipping out to Calcutta at age 21. Jilted by his fiancée, Harlan decided to seek his fortune on the Asian subcontinent. Calling himself a doctor, he briefly served as a military surgeon with the British army in the Burma War, before tales of Afghanistan fired his imagination. Disguised as a Muslim holy man, Harlan wheeled and dealed his way to Kabul, buying up mercenaries and bribing tribal leaders like a seasoned Afghan warlord. In 1838, Harlan was crowned king of the fierce Hazara people, although the British overthrow of the sitting Afghan ruler soon forced his departure. While mapping Harlan's adventures, Macintyre entertains readers with odd episodes (e.g., Harlan visiting an Afghan sauna fueled by burning night soil) and myriad ironies (e.g., Freemason Harlan trading secrets with an old Rosicrucian sorcerer in an Afghan cave). Harlan's story alone is fascinating, but its resonance with modern-day struggles—Harlan urging the British to try "fiscal diplomacy" (i.e., gold) instead of "invading and subjugating an unoffending people"—makes it compelling. Maps not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
A broken heart can lead men astray, but few have wandered as far off course as Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker. In 1822, after sailing to Calcutta on a merchant ship, he learned that his fiancée in America had married another man. He set out on a journey that ultimately brought him to Afghanistan, with the mad hope of carving out a kingdom for himself. Amazingly, he halfway succeeded. Trading on little more than a flair for diplomatic pomp, Harlan became a confidant of Afghan princes and a player in the Great Game between Russia and Britain. Macintyre recounts Harlan's travels with dispatch, and draws on unpublished journals to let his subject's voice seep through. Harlan was relentless in cataloguing his obsessions, which included camels, alchemy, and fresh fruit; the first American to visit Kabul, he wrote memorably about the sherbet sold in the bazaar there, made with snow carried by donkey from the Hindu Kush.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
From Booklist
In the nineteenth century, just as it is in the twenty-first, Afghanistan was a brutal, chaotic, and dangerous land. Then, agents of the Russian and British empires schemed for control of the country. Into this volatile mix, an unlikely but compelling character inserted himself. Josiah Harlan was raised in a prosperous, pious Quaker family in rural Pennsylvania. As an energetic, insatiably curious boy, he was enthralled with the exploits of Alexander the Great. His fascination with Alexander and the lands of Central Asia led him to a series of military adventures in Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier region that had remarkable parallels with some of the tales told in Rudyard Kipling's classic short story "The Man Who Would Be King." Macintyre, a columnist for the Times of London, tells this story with zest, aplomb, and just a touch of sadness. Harlan was an unusual combination of romanticism and hardheaded practicality, and his encounters with a variety of British imperialists, double-dealing mercenaries, and emirs with a penchant for torture make for a thrilling real-life yarn. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
214 of 218 people found the following review helpful.
One of Kipling's better short stories
By T. Simons
This is a story about two con men in British Imperial India who cook up a scheme to make themselves kings in Afghanistan. One of Kipling's better short stories, it was admired by writers as disparate as J.M. Barrie and H.G. Wells. It suffers a little from having had a zillion imitators in the intervening century or so, and like a lot of Kipling's works, there's an undertone of paternalistic imperialism that modern readers may find grating, but it isn't like he's showing the British in a positive light either -- this is Kipling at his best, and at his best he was too good a writer to let anyone, including the British, off the hook.
Read this if you're trying to figure out whether or not you like Kipling's works that are aimed for adults -- it's very different in tone from, say, The Jungle Book or _Just So Stories_, which were written for children. If you like this, I recommend you grab Plain Tales from the Hills, his first collection of stories set in British India; it should also be available online for free.
If you're interested in the historical background for this story, it was at least partially inspired by a real individual, an American named Josiah Harlan.
45 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
A classic tale of British India
By John Allgood
What a great short story. Greed, guts and struggles for glory. If you haven't read this story but have only seen the movie, you are missing out. True, you can't see Sean Connery but you easily get the flavor of the period. And it is free! This is a great short story to read on your Kindle Iphone app.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Nobody is better than Kipling
By M. Heiss
I'm a read aloud mom with a family of boys. These stories: The Phantom Rickshaw, The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Nukes, The Man who Would be King, See Willie Winkie, and Without Benefit of Clergy, catch and hold my family's attention. Gorgeous language, action - packed, amazing characters.
This is a tacky, cheap edition, but it only costs $3.00 brand new. It's worth finding Kipling at a book sale in an older, nicer edition. The stories inside are excellent, and one nice feature about this book is that no professional ditherer felt the need to add an introduction. Phew!
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