This is another of Allan W. Eckert's Winning of America series. This installment deals with the bloody Indian uprising in 1763 attributed to the Ottawa chief Pontiac in the days following the fall of New France to the British during the French and Indian War. In actuality, Pontiac was not so much the leader as the initial inspiration for a frontier-wide attempt by the Great Lakes Indians to rise up and overthrow their British conquerors and restore their French allies to control of the lands west of the Alleghenies.

The uprising was a result of agressive and arrogant British policies toward the Indians, whom the British commander-in-chief Jeffery Amherst viewed as a dangerous and barbaric race that deserved to be exterminated. Against the advice of his advisors and officers, Amherst had instituted a blatant anti-Indian policy forbidding the sale of arms and ammunition to the western tribes which had the effect of effectively starving them out as they could no longer hunt and provide for themselves, a direct result of the near-total dependence of the tribes on European trade goods. When the British assumed control of the former French forts and settlements in the Northwest, the stage was set for a terrible confrontation.

Pontiac's uprising was one of the largest and nearly successful Indian rebellions in North American history, with the Indians for a time controlling nearly all the forts in the Northwest territory and laying seige to Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt. It was only with Colonel Henry Bouquet's victory at Bushy Run and the subsequent march of Bouquet and Bradstreet's armies into the Ohio country that finally quelled the bloodshed. The failure of the rebellion ultimately showed that the British were there to stay and that not only was the power of the French in America smashed forever, but that the symbiotic relationship between the whites and the native tribes was coming to an end, and with it the Indians way of life.

Eckert brings the story alive with great historical characters like Pontiac, George Croghan, Alexander Henry, Robert Rogers, John Bradstreet, and Henry Bouquet and depicts the important events that helped shape the early western frontier that would one day become the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Highly recommended.

Since a co-worker introduced me to Eckert's 'Narratives' series, I don't find time for much else. I finished Wilderness Empire, the Conquerer and am now into The Frontiersman. This has not only been a great learning experience, but an absolutely fascinating account of the American Indians, French, English, and early American colonists and the conflicts involved in the taking of America. Historic characters such as George Washington, Daniel Boone and Chiefs Pontiac and Tecumsah, come to life in a narrative that makes you feel that you are there. Eckert is a master of presenting an objective viewpoint of history - as opposed to presenting history in the viewpoint of the victors, usually the norm.

Thank you Mr. Eckert for taking the BOREDOM out of history. The graphic (and realistic) details of the struggle on the frontier captured my attention from start to finish. I can't wait to move on to the next in the series.

This is a reference among Malraux's writings, because it describes perfectly his own obsessions. Malraux has traveled a lot, and has experienced a lot of different concepts, and a lot of different situations.

He started by exporting stolen antiques in Thailand, and spent some time in prison there. He was a convinced communist, and went to several countries, where revolution were occuring in the 50s. He finally became a ministry of Charles de Gaulles, who is the symbol of liberal people in France. His ashes were recently transfered to the Pantheon by Jacques Chirac, as an acknowledge to his work, as a writer, and as a politician.

Malraux loved to build his books around historical situations, where it appeared clearly they were made by individual contributions.

This also might be one of Malraux's obsessions. Where does the individual stands in a nation. What importance should be given to the collective organism when it has to be opposed to the interests of a particular individual ?

During his life, Malraux seems to have explored all the range of possibilities, moving from a concept to another.

La Condition humaine really shows all the ambiguity of this duality Collective/Individual.

Some characters are folded up on themselves, and might represent the extreme individuality, some other die for the good of an idea, and might represent the collectivity. But at the end of the book, no one has achieved to find the Answer.

If you would like to learn about the French culture, I would highly recommend this book, for three reasons. First Malraux did a lot of interesting things at the end of the 60's, as a ministry of culture, and so impacted the current French culture. Second, the duality between collective / individual is something that perfectly describes France itself, and is the heart of the current situation of this country. And third, the book itself is really well written, and a pleasure to read.

Being a French student, I have been able to read the French text. Hence, I find it quite difficult to comment the style, since "tradutore traditore". However, I would like to insist on the philosophical content of the book. Of course, it still remains plain litterature and therefore cannot be compared to a full philosophical work. Malraux reaches the deepest essence in the XXth century : every character is fleeing his own existence, indulging in drug addiction and contemplation, or in political action. Who really overcomes his condition ? Can it be said ok Kyo : this is doubtful. The absurd dimension in the book must not neglected : the pitiful diplomatic negociation of Ferrat close the book, while the old Gisors engulfes in the blackest of nights, the same one that Tchen, in the very first pages, had vainly tempted to overcome. It is of course, the vnity of human engagements that appears, which already evokes Malraux's elvolution.

a struggle between the chinese revolutio

It seems to me that the Spanish Civil War is a period that is lost for most of us today. Very few of us lived through it and overshadowed as it was by other events soon afterwards, the passions it aroused, though virulent and enduring in both art and literature, have become dimmed over time. I imagine that in the generation under thirty-five today, those who have the vaguest notion of what took place then, would hardly form a legion. Of course, it is better known that a number of major figures from the literary and artistic world of the twenties went to fight (some on either side) in Spain. It is also probably well known that the Germans, Russians and Italians all sent troops or technical specialists to sharpen their own wares for the conflict to which this one proved but a prelude. Yet the extraordinary passions that were aroused in Spain and that reached out and infected so many of the foreign volunteers, have to be experienced by individuals and perhaps the best way I know of coming close to the tremulous heart of that ugly story is through Malraux. The book has been written as fiction by a master storyteller. The action, all of which is real and much of which was witnessed at first hand, is simply gripping. The tears it should properly evoke will also, I have no doubt, be real ones. In a way, Malraux, who also wrote a similar and equally fine book about revolution in China, is offering us a lament for all that died in those years, for crushed spirits and youth spent as fodder for cannons. It is a magnificent human story; regrettably it is one of tragedy. But if we are to remember the Holocaust of the Nazis, why should we forget the deadly internecine warfare of Spain? Indeed, how could we.

This review concerns the translation by Stuart Gilbert and Alastair Macdonald, which was excellent. Once again, there are so many books in the world, I know, but this one should not be out of print.

With eloquence Malraux recalls his dialogues with Picasso on art. They talk about the"museum without walls" each has collected along time, and discuss on why they chose each piece. Picasso says "the mask" has appeared very few times in human history, and that he is looking for it. The book is precious and makes one think deliciously on one's own "museum"

Malraux is a genius (even though he's French.) I was blown away by his artistic precision in "Man's Fate" and I am no less enthused about this work. Although a bit long-winded at times, Andre has done it again. A man for the next century as well as the last. Bravo!

I am a native French speaker and a professor of French Literature. I love this novel and have a real bone to pick with this 1932 British translation, which refers to the hero-revolutionaries as "terrorists," a word which has come to mean something quite horrendous in America. Malraux's writing style is anything but stiff. It's the translator who chose stiff and stuffy words. Where there seems to be a tone of condescention from the translator, there is none whatsoever in the French. If anything, this is a very fluid novel, based on what Malraux considered an American style of novel writing. Fluid, fast-paced, character-driven. Why is this the only translation available to us in the US? Because the publisher probably didn't have to pay a copywright fee to publish this translation. It's a sin of greed -- how ironic when this novel is basically about that very thing.

Andre Malraux became France's Minister of Culture but before that he wrote this and everything about his prose style and characters are so very civilized. Thats what makes the events described here all the more shocking. From Old Man Gisors, the opium smoking oracle, to the young Chinese student revolutionaries to the French gambler to the assassin everything is told in so controlled a manner as to make these things seem impossible to happen. But they do. This is China on the eve of the Communist Revolution. The French have been busily at work doing business in the ancient land when suddenly the political climate changes. Each character is affected by these events in very personal ways. Malraux gets to the very core of each. His end to tell each persons story without prejudice to which side one is on. A very interesting technique. We understand all sides of the equation at once. Arresting, breathtaking fiction. Every character is real. Malraux did not rise to this level of performance again. Read this for the history and for the level eye which Malraux brings to it.

Andre Malraux, is in most book stores found with the philosophers,"The Fate of Man" however shows that he is also a novelist and a scolar of the first order. I don't know how many of the people whom I know that have read this book who consider it one of the best they ever read. One needn't agree with him to appreciate his skill as a thinker and a story teller.

This review relates to an English translation of this novel published in 1930.

I have had a great fascination with the temples of Angkor Wat and its surrounds in Cambodia for as long as I can remember. Visiting Khajuraho and Mahabalipuram in India made me feel even more deprived of the opportunity to visit Angkor - Cambodia is such a dangerous place to travel to. Consequently I have satisfied myself as best as I can with books. And so many of these refer to 'The Royal Way', a novel by Andre Malruax that it is claimed recreates the atmosphere of Angkor better than anything else. Consequently I felt even more aggrieved to find the book is just about unobtainable. Recently, however, I did get a copy which I have just finished reading.

'The Royal Way' is a strong novel with good characters and ideas. It is not a happy story however. Hardship is barely rewarded for the characters. This novel is NOT about Angkor despite the bibliographies to books on Angkor that cite it. The two principle characters spend a short time on the causeway at Angkor, but even that is in the darkness of night. The novel does evoke great images of the jungle and the tribal people living there, as well as one temple from which the characters strip three huge carved stones.

I could speculate that Malraux deliberately didn't write about a brilliant glowing Angkor for the very reason that he didn't want people stripping sculptures from it as his characters (and himself as a young man) did from 'lost' temples overgrown in the jungle. This is a good novel of struggle against nature and with ethics, but you should not read it for the feel of Angkor or any of the other major temple complexes in Cambodia.

Surprisingly lackluster, considering the unconventional politics and adventuresome life of the author. He manages subsume his ego in historico-geographical detail, so that though he occupies a privileged position at some of the most charged moments of 20th century history, somehow there's just no story there.

Surprisingly unfascinating, considering the adventurous life and convention-breaking political conventions of the author. In an attempt to subsume the ego of the author in a mass of erudition and historo-geographical detail, Malraux sacrifices much of the sense of purpose that this book really needed.

The narration shifts back and forth between father and sonduring two world wars in the Alsace region. The book opens with oneof the narrators enduring life as a prisoner of war, with the sense of time having ceased to exist. The descriptions of literary life before WWI set up a vivid contrast with the account of a gas attack on the Russian front. A reader well versed in philosophy and history, or reading the original French text, will no doubt understand more of the implications in the dialogues. Read the preface carefully to get acclimated, but don't miss the unexpected developments of this novel.