Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia  enlarge Author: Tom Bissell Publisher: Pantheon Category: Book List Price: $24.95 Buy New: $1.97 as of 5/20/2012 08:58 EDT details You Save: $22.98 (92%) In Stock New (19) Used (60) Collectible (9) from $1.29 Seller: internationalbooks Sales Rank: 984,777 Media: Hardcover Edition: 1ST Pages: 416 Number Of Items: 1 Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6 Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.3 ISBN: 0375421300 Dewey Decimal Number: 915.870486 EAN: 9780375421303 ASIN: 0375421300 Publication Date: September 23, 2003 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Condition: Book is in new condition, without any defects. Thousands of books shipped daily! Also Available In:   •  Unknown Binding - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia [Paperback]   •  Paperback - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia   •  Paperback - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia   •  Hardcover - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia   •  Kindle Edition - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia Similar Items: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics) The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam The Places In Between The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (Kodansha Globe) Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, Turkey and Iran Editorial Reviews: Product Description In 1960, the Aral Sea was the size of Lake Michigan: a huge body of water in the deserts of Central Asia. By 1996, when Tom Bissell arrived in Uzbekistan as a naïve Peace Corps volunteer, disastrous Soviet irrigation policies had shrunk the sea to a third its size. Bissell lasted only a few months before complications forced him to return home, but he had already become obsessed with this beautiful, brutal land. Five years later, Bissell convinces a magazine to send him to Central Asia to investigate the Aral Sea’s destruction. There, he joins forces with a high-spirited young Uzbek named Rustam, and together they make their often wild way through the ancient cities—Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara—of this fascinating but often misunderstood part of the world. Slipping more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police, who suspect them of crimes ranging from Christian evangelism to heroin smuggling, the two young men develop an unlikely friendship as they journey to the shores of the devastated sea. Along the way, Bissell provides a history of the Uzbeks, recounting their region’s long, violent subjugation by despots such as Jenghiz Khan and Joseph Stalin. He conjures the people of Uzbekistan with depth and empathy, and he captures their contemporary struggles to cope with Islamist terrorism, the legacy of totalitarianism, and the profound environmental and human damage wrought by the sea’s disappearance. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes powerfully sobering, Chasing the Sea is a gripping portrait of an unfamiliar land and the debut of a gifted young writer.

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