`Among the many gripping tales of travel and exploration the tale of Alexander Gardner is surely one of the most extraordinary. Master storyteller John Keay deftly sifts truth from myth-making to uncover fascinating new evidence, revealing an amazing tale worthy of Kipling or Flashman of a life lived further out on the edge than most could even imagine` MICHAEL WOOD Like the travels of Marco Polo, those of Alexander Gardner clip the white line between credible adventure and creative invention. Either this Scots-American is the nineteenth century`s most intrepid traveller or its most egregious fantasist, or a bit of both. Contemporaries generally believed him; posterity became more sceptical. And as with Polo, the investigation of Gardner`s story enlarged man`s understanding of the world and upped the pace of scientific and political exploration. Before more reputable explorers notched up their own discoveries in innermost Asia, this lone traveller had roamed the deserts of Turkestan, ridden round the world`s most fearsome knot of mountains and fought, as the first American in Afghanistan, `for the good cause of right against wrong`.From the Caspian to Tibet and from Kandahar to Kashgar, Gardner had seen it all.At the time, the 1820s, no other outsider had managed anything remotely comparable. When word of his feats filtered out, geographers were agog. Historians were more intrigued by what followed. After thirteen years as a white-man-gone-native in Central Asia, Gardner re-emerged as a colonel of artillery in the employ of India`s last great native empire. He witnessed the death throes of that Sikh Empire at close quarters and, sparing no gruesome detail, recorded his own part in the bloodshed (the very same featuring as the exploits of `Alick` Gardner in the `Flashman` series). Fame finally caught up with him during his long retirement in Kashmir. Dressed in tartan yet still living as a native, he mystified visiting dignitaries and found a ready audience for the tales of his adventurous past. But one mystery he certainly took to the grave: the whereabouts of his accumulated fortune has still to be discovered.Using much original material, including newly discovered papers by Gardner himself, this investigative biography by John Keay, bestselling author of India: A History, takes the reader on a quest from the American West to the Asian East to unravel the greatest enigma in the history of travel.

Related Products:

NOAA Chart 19421 – Gardner Pinnacles and Approaches – Gardner Pinnacles In The Footsteps Of Alexander The Great Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations Midnight`s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day India: A History Alexander Hamilton The Incredible Yet True Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt India: A Short History Peppa Pig: Baby Alexander Alexander the Great Dane The Book of Alexander India Conquered: Britain`s Raj and the Chaos of Empire The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science American Interior: The Quixotic Journey of John Evans, His Search for a Lost Tribe and How, Fuelled by Fantasy and (Possibly) Booze, He Accidentally Annexed a Third of North America The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China Alexander Bay Josiah The Great India: A Traveller`s History The Great Empires of Asia Xanadu – Marco Polo and the Discovery of The East Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India 1765-1843 The Raj at War: A People`s History of India`s Second World War The Story of India In Search of Ancient North Africa: A History in Six Lives Curry; A Biography Native American Wisdom Travels with Charley – In Search of America NOAA Chart 17331 – Chatham Strait’”Ports Alexander, Conclusion and Armstrong American Southwest The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company Darien: A Journey in Search of Empire The Journals of a Victorian Traveller: From the Journals of Julia Errington Biddulph 1844-1933 Travel In Dangerous Places In Search of the Lost Orient: An Interview Land of the Midnight Sun: Alexander`s Arctic Adventure A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes Admiralty Chart 3571 – Lavoisier Island to Alexander Island NOAA Chart 11328 – Houston Ship Channel – Atkinson Island to Alexander Island Mapping the Great Game: Explorers, Spies & Maps in 19th-Century Central Asia, India and Tibet In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730