Every time I have written the life of a man, there has hovered before my mind's eye the image, physical and spiritual, of a river, but only once have I beheld in a river the image of man and his fate. When, at the end of 1924, I first saw the Great Dam at Asw芒n, its symbolic significance burst upon me with such force that seemed to comprehend the River Nile forwards and backwards from this crucial point in its course. A mighty element had been tamed by human ingenuity so that the desert should bring forth fruit, an achievement which the centenarian Faust had attempted as the highest attainable to man in the service of his fellow-men. The thought of the end of Faust, as it stood embodied before my eyes in Asw芒n, fired me with the thought of writing the epic of the Nile as I had written the story of great men--as a parable.
But before I could tell the story of its adventures, and reveal their deeper meaning, I had to know the river from end to end, so that I might confirm or correct this vision in its detail. I had long known other parts of Africa. I loved that continent, because it had brought me happiness: even before the war I had seen on the equator the source of the Nile. But not until I set out to study it did it stand revealed as the most wonderful of all rivers.
This, the greatest single stream on earth, is yet by no means the most abundant, a fact which determines its whole life and that of its basin. It flows through the desert; for half of its course it receives neither tributaries nor rain, yet it does not dry up; indeed, close to its end, it creates the most fertile of all lands. In its youth it dissipates its finest powers, yet it arrives at its mouth with might. Though it flows along almost one-tenth of the earth's circumference, it maintains the simplest form of all rivers; save for a single loop, its course is from south to north, and over a . . .
Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau, now part of Poland. Ludwig studied law but chose writing as a career. At first he wrote plays and novella, but also worked as a journalist. In 1906, he moved to Switzerland, but, during World War I, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and Istanbul. He became a Swiss citizen in 1932, later emigrating to the United States in 1940.
At the end of the Second World War, he went to Germany as a journalist, and it is to him that we owe the retrieving of Goethe's and Schiller's coffins, which had disappeared from Weimar in 1943/44. He returned to Switzerland after the war and died in 1948, in Moscia, near Ascona.
During the 1920s, he achieved international fame for his popular biographies which combined historical fact and fiction with psychological analysis. After his biography of Goethe was published in 1920, he wrote several similar biographies, including one about Bismarck (1922鈥�24) and another about Jesus (1928). As Ludwig's biographies were popular outside of Germany and were widely translated, he was one of the fortunate 茅migr茅s who had an income while living in the United States. His writings were considered particularly dangerous by Goebbels, who mentioned him in his journal.
Ludwig interviewed Benito Mussolini and on December 1, 1929 Mustafa Kemal Atat眉rk. His interview with the founder of the Republic of Turkey appeared in Wiener Freie Presse in March 1930, addressing issues of religion and music. He also interviewed Joseph Stalin in Moscow on December 13, 1931. An excerpt from this interview is included in Stalin's book on Lenin. Ludwig describes this interview in his biography of Stalin. What was originally an omitted section of the interview by Joseph Stalin himself, Professor of Montclair State University Grover Furr had finally published an English version of it.
Ludwig's extended interviews with T.G. Masaryk, founder and longtime president of Czechoslovakia, appeared as Defender of Democracy in 1936.
The Nile: The Life-Story of a River is a great book if you want to know everything there is to know about it! There is virtually no subject untouched by the author: agriculture, dams, energy production, geography, geology, world history, peoples, politicians, politics, social mores, and warfare.
I purchased this book from an antique bookstore in Buffalo, NY, many years ago because of its Egypt theme. I was not disappointed, solely because it is all encompassing. If you have a fascination with Egypt and are skeptical of revisionist history, this is the book for you.
The Nile is a period book. By this, I suggest, that, when it was written in 1937, there were few comprehensive texts that covered Egypt. Accordingly, authors during this period had a tendency to embellish, which gives the work a touch of rococo. Since we are not used to this type of writing style, it perhaps leaves us with a sense of inauthenticity or doubt. However, from what I have come to know from Egyptologists and historians, most of the book rings true.
Emil Ludwig was a seasoned writer and I was not anticipating learning so much about leaders from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The text was peppered with all sorts of interesting facts. For example, during our Civil War (1861-1865), Egypt took the lead in the production of cotton. In Egypt, cotton replaced grains and vegetables as the number one cash crop. Of course, this had an impact on both the United States and the world following the 1860s.
this is magnificent, i had the chance to read this via great piece translated in arabic. ludwig never ceases to give distinctions in his writings, he slowly draw an empirical tale for the nile starting from the main source behind the mountains in south africa all going through till it flows in the mid-sea. born & death of a vivid being, in his descriptions he gives detailed explanation to the surroundings around him starting from plants and its kinds accompanying their latin-names all to insects, birds, reptiles and animals he distinctly tells in depth the details of these creatures that lives around the river all going through to the descriptions of humans living around the shores of the river, their physical & facial description, language color and even their tribe characteristics. i remember the part when he came across two tribes one are vegetarians and others on the other side who are cannibals. the enigmatic tale proceeds till it reach the port in Egypt. its also interesting to say that the boat used for the expedition were owned by King Farouk where they were friends at the time. A great literary piece but also hard to grasp because of the latin names and the geographical descriptions with solid jargons- even the arabic translation was intricate and on point which showed how rich the content is
Ludwig sustains his characterization of this, in terms of human history, most important of the world's rivers as a living entity throughout his well-written book. Some may find its language a bit outmoded (the edition I read is from 1937), but all will leave with a deeper knowledge, appreciation, and sense of awe.
DNF for now. This book started out beautiful with descriptions of the Nile and the surrounding landscape it was like reading the best poetry. (not a book of poems) Then the author started describing villages along the river and the people who lived in them His descriptions of the people were rather contradictory. First he would praise their attributes, stature, skin color, friendliness or savagery but then he would say something about how over emotional they were or something about their lack of intelligence. I found this confusing and offensive but I give him credit for not being totally discriminatory. Next came chapters on the Abyssinian wars which I was not interested in but can see the need to include this history. I do plan to come back to this book one day and I do recommend it for anyone interested in historical geography.
Fascinating book about the history of the Nile and Nile Valley from ancient days until the mid'30's. Particularly interesting about the more recent history, e.g., Napoleon. the British, etc. Also interesting if one is a fan of Amelia Peabody....