Long March to Freedom

by Thomas R. Hargrove

Thomas Hargrove's Long March to Freedom is a record of Hargrove's eleven months as a hostage of Colombian guerrillas and was the basis for the recent movie hit Proof of Life that starred Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, and David Morse. While the movie invented a fictitious romantic angle, Long March to Freedom is the actual journal Hargrove kept in captivity, and the listener gets a sense of the intense emotions and the tension caused by bouts of monotony broken by sudden brutality as well as the strength, wit and personality through which Hargrove kept himself alive.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Memoir, Biography

Cards

First published November 14, 1995

About the author

Thomas R. Hargrove was raised on a cotton farm in West Texas, but has spent most of his adult life in South-east Asia. He received his B.S. degree from Texas A&M University, and M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees from lowa State University.

In 1988, he received the ACE Professional Award, the Highest honor given to a single communicator by Agricultural Communicators in Education, a 650-member professional society based in the USA. Hargrove was the first awardee honored for work done outside North America. He also received the 1988 ACE Award of Excellence in International Affairs.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased, because I'm Tom Hargrove's nephew. But this book is a harrowing day-by-day account of the tedium and terror of being an unwilling guest of the FARC.

I first encountered its pages in the form of tiny strips of paper smelling of smoke, full of words written in cramped spanish by firelight. My uncle smuggled these notes, written by firelight , out of captivity in a money belt he wore that his captors never found. They were later collated, translated, and released as this book.

[Christopher Manske · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long March To Freedom provides the details behind Tom Hargrove's true-life experience as a hostage after being kidnapped by Colombian narco-guerrillas. The author kept notes on random scraps of paper which he finally had to smuggle out of Colombia so that he could accurately share the painful details of his ordeal in captivity. I met Hargrove on April 27th 2003 when he spoke to the Military Officers Association of America in Houston, Texas. His presentation was very much like this book: honest, hard-hitting, and inspiring.

[Ed Vaughn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a direct transcription of the diary Hargrove kept while held captive for ransom. It would have been more interesting if penned in a more dramatic format. A chapter on his movements, the food, the weather, his health, etc. but still a good read.

[Deann Alford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written in the early 1990s when a romantic notion of Colombia's FARC guerrillas still permeated some sectors of the West. This is Hargrove's journal that he smuggled on tiny pieces of paper out of the jungle when he was rescued. Don't know if it was a coincidence that the romanticism about Colombia's civil war died out around the time it was published but there's no noble cause in kidnapping, among the grossest human rights abuses out there, and this book exposes who was really fighting that war in the jungle.

[John Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After hearing Tom speak at the Air Force Dynamics of International Terrorism course, I was moved to purchase his book. Glad I did. Interesting tale and well presented. Makes you think about the difficulties that others have endured.

[lunaticprophet · Rating 3 out of 5]

***+ True story of kidnapped American scientist fighting to survive and keep his sanity in Central America. The pace of the book and the descriptions bring to mind the sheer and total boredom on his life and his wrenching despair.

[Carol Woodward]

interesting but the days were much the same and I got bored with the chapters and wanted to hear about how it ended.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the story but it was long, repetitious (obviously because of the author's circumstances) and hard to get through at times.