I just read about Ferñao Mendes on damnthatsinteresting and would like something in this vein. Something full of adventure, preferably funny.
Preferably no US or UK please, as I would like to learn about people from other parts of the world. I feel like 90% of my other reading material is authors from those countries, despite my not being from there.
Bonus points if they are Australian.
I have already read The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do and am reading The Eagle in the Mirror by Jesse Fink. – both Aussies.
Thank you.
by saturday_sun4
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Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
Australian memoirs, Parkin’s books are outstanding:
*From Ingleburn to Aitape: The Trials and Tribulations of a Four Figure Man* by Bob “Hooker” Holt, 2/3rd Australian Infantry Battalion, 16th Brigade, 6th Division, 2nd A.I.F.
*Ray Parkin’s Wartime Trilogy: Out of the Smoke; Into the Smother; The Sword and the Blossom* by Ray Parkin.
Biographies:
*Peter the Great: His Life and World* by Robert K. Massie.
*Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus* by Samuel Eliot Morison.
*A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century* by Barbara Tuchman.
*The Scandalous Regent: A Life of Philippe, Duc d’Orleans, 1674-1723 and of His Family* by Warren Hamilton Lewis.
*Vasili: The Lion of Crete* by Murray Elliott [a “Kiwi”].
*Ho Chi Minh: A Biographical Introduction* by Charles Fenn.
*Three Marshals of France: Leadership After Trauma* by Anthony Clayton.
*General Alphonse Juin* by Ludovic Danigo.
*Wings, Women, and War Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat* by Reina Pennington.
*Four Samurai: A Quartet of Japanese Army Commanders in the Second World War* by Arthur Swinson. Biographies of four Japanese Army generals: Homma (‘41/’42 Philippines), Yamashita (Malaya ‘41/’42 and Philippines ‘44/’45), Mutaguchi (‘44 Imphal offensive) and Honda (‘44 northern Burma).
*The Tiger of Malaya: The Story* [biographies] *of General Tomoyuki Yamashita and “Death March” General Masaharu Homma* by Aubrey Saint Kenworthy.
*A Soldier Must Hang: The Biography of an Oriental General* [Yamashita Tomoyuki] by John Deane Potter.
*Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography* by John Toland.
Ella Maillart forbidden journey, Swiss women going to Afghanistan by car in the 1930s