Product Description

The long-awaited fifth edition of Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places comes fresh from the danger zones. An underground classic among the CIA, mujahadeen, special forces, NGOs, and savvy adventurers, DP has now become the de facto standard in understanding the groups, the players, the places, and tensions that fuel conflicts around the world. Pelton and his contributors tell it like it is in a brutally honest and personal style that delivers crisp, insightful, and useful information. DP5 gives the scoop when the media and guidebooks -- and even governments -- won't dare. The ground truth and hard-won experience inside DP5 will open your eyes and may save your life.

In addition to the exclusive first-person reports, DP5 also includes thousands of hard-to-find contacts, Web sites, e-mails, survival tips, travel ideas, adventures, and even safety schools for war journalists. No walls, no barriers, no bull. The most dangerous countries from five stars (Hell on Earth) to one star (dangerous rep).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #951500 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1048 pages

Amazon.com Review
The World's Most Dangerous Places is not a comforting book; its pages bristle with tales of land mines, war zones, terrorists, mercenaries, mafiosi, massacres, kidnappers, drug smugglers, and all the other travel disasters that are the stuff of nightmares. But then, as the editors point out in their foreword, "as travelers are kidnapped and executed in Cambodia, a recognized dangerous place, they also are hunted down and murdered in Los Angeles." In other words, the most dangerous place in the world is more of a state of mind: ignorance.

Neither is The World's Most Dangerous Places meant to be used as a guidebook. True, there will be some adrenaline junkies out there who, upon perusing the pages about the war in Chechnya, decide that that's the place they want to be. The people most likely to benefit from this book, however, are those who either have to visit the perilous corners of the world--journalists, foreign-service employees, etc.--or those who have a desire to learn more about such places without necessarily visiting them. It's also a good compliment to more mainstream guidebooks for the growing legion of adventure travelers whose quests for higher mountains to climb, fiercer rivers to raft, and wilder trails to hike often take them to hazardous regions. Whether you're planning a trip to a dangerous place or you just want to learn more about one, The World's Most Dangerous Places is the right book at the right time.

Review
"A primer on how to get in an out of potentially lethal places." -- --U.S. News & World Report

"One of the oddest and most fascinating travel books to appear in a long time." -- --New York Times

"Survival tips you just don't get anywhere else!" -- --Outside magazine

"The controversial adventurers' guidebook to the world's hot spots." -- --Today Show

About the Author
Robert Young Pelton is also the author of Come Back Alive, his auto-biography, The Adventurist, and is a regular columnist for National Geographic Adventure. He produces and hosts a television series for Discovery and the Travel Channel, and appears frequently as an expert on current affairs and travel safety on CNN, FOX News, and other news networks.

Customer Reviews

Real World In Your Face--What CIA & Media Don't Report

I've heard Robert Young Pelton speak, and he is, if anything, even more thoughtful and provocative in person. He has written an extraordinary book that ordinary people will take to be a sensationalist travel guide, while real experts scrutinize every page for the hard truths about the real world that neither the CIA nor the media report.

Unlike clandestine case officers and normal foreign service officers, all of them confined to capital cities and/or relying on third party reporting, Robert Young Pelton actually goes to the scene of the fighting, the scene of the butchery, the scene of the grand thefts, and unlike all these so-called authoritative sources, he actually has had eyeballs on the targets and boots in the mud.

I have learned two important lessons from this book, and from its author Robert Young Pelton:

First, trust no source that has not actually been there. He is not the first to point out that most journalists are "hotel warriors", but his veracity, courage, and insights provide compelling evidence of what journalism could be if it were done properly. Government sources are even worse--it was not until I heard him speak candidly about certain situations that I realized that most of our Embassy reporting--both secret and open--is largely worthless because it is third hand, not direct.

Second, I have learned from this book and the author that sometimes the most important reason for visiting a war zone is to learn about what is NOT happening. His accounts of Chechnya, and his personal first-hand testimony that the Russians were terrorizing their Muslims in the *absence* of any uprising or provocation, are very disturbing. His books offers other accounts of internal terrorism that are being officially ignored by the U.S. Government, and I am most impressed by the value of his work as an alternative source of "national intelligence" and "ground truth".

There are a number of very important works now available to the public on the major threats to any country's national security, and most of them are as unconventional as this one--Laurie Garrett on public health, Marq de Villiers on Water, Joe Thorton on chlorine-based industry and the environment--and some, like Robert D. Kaplan's books on his personal travels, are moving and inspiring reflections on reality as few in the Western world could understand it--but Robert Young Pelton is in my own mind the most structured, the most competent, the most truthful, and hence the most valuable reporter of fact on the world's most dangerous places.

What most readers may not realize until they read this book is that one does not have to travel to these places to be threatened by them--what is happening there today, and what the U.S. government does or does not do about developments in these places, today, will haunt this generation and many generations to follow. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who cares to contemplate the real world right now.

Fascinating Report on Where You DON'T Want to Visit
After receiving this book as a gift, I ignored it's incredible white-pages size girth and began reading about everyplace in the world myself, as an American and Westerner, should avoid, and for what reasons.

Written as a true guidebook for aspiring war-zone journalists and adventurers, DP doesn't skimp on the facts nor gloss over details that might decide your life or death in the most war-torn (Chechnya, Algeria) or statistically dangerous (Colombia, Cambodia) countries on the Earth. With well over 30 countries examined, you'll learn first hand why a Westerner shouldn't visit there, followed by detailed descriptions of who to avoid, what regional areas to steer clear from, and in case you really want to experience life on the wild side or if you really need that Solider of Fortune byline, how to get in and out without dying.

Most fascinating to me is the rating system DP gives to certain countries. You'd be alarmed to learn why places such as Ethiopia gets a solid 5 star avoidance rating (constant, recent war with Enteria and the abundance of landmines) yet other tradionally Western-unfriendly places like Iraq and North Korea (rated "safer" than even America) due to their brutal punishment of minor crimes and police-state environments.

With well over 200 pages of "helpful" research involving which transportation to avoid in any country, how to walk around various types of land mines, and what penalties you can expect for smuggling drugs out of the mountanious roads surrounding Pakistan, this book is an almost guilty, factual read that never impresses on the reader the author's morals. I kept reading from county to country, hoping that the next alphabetical sequence was somehow more deadly or destructive for visitors than the last. An incredible abundance of recent (DP is in it's 4th edition) web-links for the various rebel factions and government parties kept me interested well after I put the book down.

Most country chapters are supplemented by the author's (or contributing author's) true, diary-like details regarding what he went through during his experience "in country".

World Politics in a Nutshell
I have read this book (in this version and it's earlier editions) several times, and I still cannot get enough. This is due to several reasons.

First, because I have found Pelton's accounts of various places I personally have been to be accurate, I trust the author. And trustworthiness is an important characteristic of a writer in Pelton's position - ie. advisor to individuals contemplating travel into some of the world's most dangerous places.

Second, I keep going back to DP because I enjoy Pelton's style. He is a no-nonsense, "tell it like it is" guy...but he never loses his sense of humor - an essential quality to have when traveling in places that are dangerous, uncomfortable, or inconvient.

Third, I find this book invaluable, not only because of the travel advice dispensed, but also because, for me, reading each new edition of DP is like getting an update in worldwide current events - but NOT from the network TV drones who report only what America wants to hear! No...Pelton tells us the TRUTH - from the inside. Not some watered down, American-propagandized version. For example, I admired Pelton a few years ago after I spent a year in Russia and central Asia: his coverage of Russia and Chechnya was excellent - and accurate. And nothing like what was reported on American TV.

It is for this last reason that I would recommend DP to anyone - not just to those considering travel to the world's war zones and crime centers. It it not just about travel - it is an annual education in world events!