Overview
Nearly 100 years ago -- in 1898 -- the British sent an expeditionary force under General Kitchener to the Sudan to avenge General Gordon and put down a rebellion led by the Khalifa Abdullah. Kitchener's army closed with Abdullah at Omdurman; the results were an early version of Desert Storm.Riding in Kitchener's calvary was a young subaltern, Winston Churchill, who had come to write as well as fight. Even at a young age Churchill exuded authority, and this book, which made him famous, has become a classic.
Synopsis
Yet he who had not seen the desert or felt the sun heavily on his shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub. Unnourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water's edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the vegetation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs and thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards their bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yellow glint of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and protests that Nature is not always mischievous and cruel.
Library Journal
Churchill wrote this account of the campaign at Omdurman in Arabia in 1899 when he was still soldiering for the queen. It was his first major historical work and is still considered one of his most riveting.