Throw Out Two Hands

by Anthony Smith

Throw Out Two Hands is an amazing story of a journey across Africa by gas balloon. It often reads like a novel, but it's a true story. There are moments of terror, moments of sheer joy, and overall this book has a message of friendship and adventure that is impossible to have in today's world. I met the author years ago, and was simply charmed. The book is better than any other on the topic of ballooning adventure.

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[John Ollerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the part when the author was stranded overnight in the bush and tried to remember if lions could climb trees

[Ivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthony Smith humble beginnings as a journalist, an environmentalist and a scholar. There's a reminder of how much education and experience goes into becoming a competent, equanimous human being, that he is today.

One can see that in 1962 he was not extremely concerned about the environment, and at that point even utters such words as "black rhinos are stupid and ugly beasts of Pleistocene, they ought to have remained there. There are way too many gnus ... black rhinos in Africa ", "...explained to us that natives love to drink and make love before everything else, while I can't say that I disagree ... while seeing this I have to say that there are too many natives trying to raise too much cattle, overmuch for their own needs, thus creating unfair(sic!) competition for the local European(sic!) farmers" *-unfair, probably means that native people are not becoming poor enough, fast enough; 'local' means English and German colonizers. Those quotes are from memory, not verbatim, but still show a general mindset of a supposedly educated person of the time.