Wanderlust: 500 years of travel writing by explorers of Jewish origin, 1492-1992

by Jay Garfinkel (Editor)

Wanderlust is an anthology complied from 20 brilliant & passionate travel writers of Jewish origin. These are first hand accounts by men who abandoned the comforts of home & family & paid a high personal price for their Wanderlust. They struggle with discomfort, deprivation & perhaps worst of all, uncertainty - which is the essence of the exploration process. North Pole, mountain climbing, volcano exploration, dinosaur fossil & Big Game hunting, African & Asian explorations are documented. Richly illustrated with maps & photographs. Each chapter is introduced with a biography of the explorer. The significance of the journey is given historical context. In 1991, veteran television producer/director Jay Garfinkel was commissioned by the Library of Congress to produce a one hour television special on Christopher Columbus as part of the national 500th Columbus celebration scheduled for October 1992. The Library of Congress holds extensive original documents & maps of the Columbus Expedition. The inevitable question everyone connected with the production was curious about "Was Columbus Jewish?" could at last be answered. He wasn't. With that question answered the researchers & associate producers stayed focused on the central themes of the Columbus Expedition documentary. The shows producer, Jay Garfinkel had the nagging feeling that within the vast collection of the Library of Congress there had to be material on Jewish exploration. There was. Buried in long forgotten archives are mountains of material on Jewish explorers. Maps, letters & books, long out of print, were just waiting for someone to rediscover them. Now, nearly 10 years after the documentary, Christopher God, Gold & Glory, was nationally broadcast, we have the arrival of Jay Garfinkel's newly published book, 20 Extraordinary Travel Adventures, an anthology of 500 years of travel writing by explorers of Jewish origin.Editorial Review - Cahners Business Information (c) 2001In this enjoyable collection of travel adventures, Garfinkel, the veteran television producer/director responsible for the documentary Christopher God, Glory and Gold, here focuses on explorers of Jewish origin. His extensive research, which began ten years ago, covers all parts of the world, both land and sea, and all sorts of adventures, including mountain climbing, volcano exploration, and dinosaur fossil digging. Readers will be fascinated by the journal entries of Israel Cohen's voyage from Hong Kong to Shanghai, Henry Shoskes's portrait of a Siamese opium den, Emil Bessels's dramatic account of his search for the North Pole, and Gottfried Merbacher's description of his ascents in China's Tain Shan mountains. Several memorable books have been written on explorers' adventures, such as Samuel Eliot Morison's classic two-volume The European Discovery of America. This historically rewarding collection is exploration travel at its best and deserves to be added to the list of the greats. Highly recommended.

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 2, 2001