Word: stewart
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...journey, Stewart discovers that his wanderlust is distinctly un-Mongolian. They are nomads, but their wanderings are circumscribed by traditions that have hardly changed for a millennium. It is Stewart who stands out as a badachir, a lone itinerant always searching for more. The Mongolians, who gave up the world, have long since accepted their fate...
...legacy. The Greeks gave us literature and philosophy, the Romans architecture and law, the British railroads and cricket. The Mongols, true to their nomadic temperament, built nothing and walked away as if their empire were a mere winter camp. They are history's ultimate one-hit wonders. But as Stewart discovers, they have taken this eclipse well. Mongolians can be a barrel of laughs, especially at weddings, which devolve into violently fun drinking sessions in which "giving your new in-laws a good thumping" is expected. The author, perhaps influenced by the omnipresent Genghis Khan vodka, clearly approves...
...Stanley Stewart...
...Stewart's sense of humor stands him in good stead during a forbidding journey that begins in Istanbul and then carries him through bleak Russia, bleaker Kazakhstan and into the finality of Mon-golia, a swept land that "made the sky ... seem crowded and fussy." Inspired by what he perceives as the Arcadian freedom of the nomads?the word Mongo-lian, he writes, "evokes the scent of grass and of fallen leaves, some atmosphere of twilight and horses"?Stewart plans to journey the 1,600-kilometer breadth of Mongolia by horse, not a good idea unless your last name...
...Stewart's mining of Mongol history is fascinating. Who knew, for example, that Khan's son supposedly considered massacring China's entire population? But the author's real strength is in sketching the characters he encounters: a Dickens-loving Russian pimp, a shy newlywed, a Mongolian librarian of Chekhovian futility. Far from the taciturn nomads one might expect, Mongolians are voluble talkers ravenous for news: Stewart disappoints his attentive hosts only when he fails to relay sufficiently lurid gossip...