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 enlarge | Author: Ishmael Beah
Publisher: Large Print Distribution
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $9.30
You Save: $4.65 (33%)
New (19) Used (8) from $7.57
Avg. Customer Rating:  428 reviews
Sales Rank: 1708115
Format: Large Print
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 397
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594132674
Dewey Decimal Number: 966.404
EAN: 9781594132674
ASIN: 1594132674
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Everyone Should Read This Book November 29, 2008
This book about the boy soldiers of recent wars in Africa was especially meaningful for us because we lived in neighboring Liberia for 2 years just before the wars broke out. We were teaching school up "in the bush", and some of the boys thought it would be wonderful to be soldiers when they grew up. Well, they did not have time to grow up before the wars came and they were conscripted. The first hand account by Ishmael Beah matches what is published and/or shown about the war events in other countries. With the current attraction of our boys in the US to video "war games", they need to read what life is really like for boys in other countries. Parents need to know and make sure their children are aware of the plight of children in much of the world. It would counteract the huge desire for more things and entertainment here, and perhaps would cause our youth to be caring and benevolent to the many causes there are to help the unfortunate of the world.
A Long Way Gone November 25, 2008
In this autobiography, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah tells the story of his Civil War experience. In his tragic story, Beah is trying to share his struggles with the world so that people are aware of what had happened to children in Seria Lone.
Throughout the book Ishmael looses his parents, sister, brother, and friends. For a month or so he is alone until he finds a new group of boys. These boys go though a lot together and end up becoming close friends. Later in the book they find a campsite that is willing to supply them with food and shelter, just what the boys need, in return for one thing; they had to become soldiers to help protect that campsite from the rebels. Ishmael had never planned on becoming a soldier so he was a little hesitant at first, but finally agreed. . As the months went on, Ishmael started to learn to love his life as a soldier and didn't want to give it up, until one day when he had no choice. Ishmael was picked up by a rehab center that helped children stay away from war. He finds out that life outside of the war is a lot different.
Ishmael did a great job in explaining his experience without leaving out any details. I felt his struggle and his emotion that came with it while I was reading his book.
Personally, I loved this book. Most of the time it was hard to put down. As a high school student, the book's descriptions were so vivid and realistic that it almost felt as if it were a movie. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good nonfiction book that is hard to put down.
AMAIZINGLY INTERESTING November 23, 2008
This book is so interesting that it is hard to put down and if all of this is true that these boys went thru it; it's more amaizing that the human body and mind can go thru so much and survive with some sort of humanity.
 Wow! Powerful.... November 18, 2008
A Long Way Gone is a memoir of Ishmael Beah's days as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Some reviewers have questioned the accuracy of the details...I read this book with an open mind, realizing that this book details the author's memories of the events he experienced as a child soldier. Beah is a good storyteller, and effectively illustrates the horrifying reality of living in a country where the government is so vulnerable to rebel forces. The details are vivid, and at times, very difficult to read. I cannot fathom how traumatic it must have been to see so many people killed, and to be one of the killers. This is Beah's story, and the fact of the matter is that what happened to Beah is going on in other countries today, and everyone needs to be aware of it. This book should be required reading in middle and/or high school. An incredible story.
 a lot easier to take when you realize it's mostly FAKE November 14, 2008
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
I found this book to be quite harrowing: I frequently had to put it down and cool off, so troubling was the stuff I was reading.
But that was only up to about page 50 or so. After that it became a lot easier to stomach.
Why page 50? Because that's when I went to the internet and learned a little bit about the book's author, Ishmael Beah.
In short, Beah, while he apparently did undergo some rather unpleasant experiences in his native Sierra Leone, evidently did not undergo all the experiences related in "A Long Way Gone," or at least not directly. Many journalists have labeled this book a fraud.
If you'd like to find out about the controversy yourself, start with his Wikipedia page. Follow the links at the bottom.
Anyhow, some observations:
1. Beah has to be a world-class moron for not grasping that playing fast and loose with the truth in the age of the Internet is something that would later come back to haunt him. And don't tell me he was an untutored villager who had no way of understanding the implications of this: he was a student at Oberlin.
2. If Beah had simply pulled a Frederick Exley and said, "Hey, folks, this is a fictionalized autobiography. I'm not so much interested in the precise truth of events so much as the effect they had on my spirit and development." He would be untouchable.
3. This irony is certainly not deliberate, but you know how the central thrust of the book is that after an endless parade of horrors, you get inured? After pages and pages of blood, several limbs, and mutilated bodies, you pretty much stop caring. It's like you're an armchair boy soldier!
4. Beah should be despised, not "addressing the U.N." True, he may have "forgiven himself" in some feel-good workshop, but I for one haven't forgiven him. Look, if they gave him a Kalashnikov when he was 7 or 8 and bullied him into shooting up the town, that'd be one thing. But 15? That's old enough to know the difference between right and wrong in any culture. Murderer.
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