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The Sahara Unveiled is a book written by William Langewiesche. This book is an informative and interesting view of the Sahara and it's people. The author in his book reveals that, "The Sahara is not a natural destination and never will be. A writer writes about it, as a reader reads about it, to satisfy his curiosity about an unseen part of the world." "Sahara Unveiled" tells of the writer’s travels, by land, south from Algiers on the Trans-Saharan Highway and west across the Sahel to Dakar. It is also a tale of Algeria's Islamic revolution, the Tuareg rebellion, and the Sahel's extreme poverty, all told through encounters with locals along the way.
Langewiesche's journey begins at the Mediterranean in Algiers. Hitching rides on trucks, he heads south into increasingly desolate territory, passing through the Algerian towns of Biskra and Ta-ranasset, on into Mali, Niger, and finally to Mauritania, on the Atlantic. He is most interested in the present-day people of the Sahara and how they cope with their inhospitable desert environment and with the modern world. Langewiesche writes in an economical, straightforward style that unflaggingly retains interest. He points out that the old ways of life for Saharans are no longer possible but that attempts at modernization are doomed because the Sahara cannot be subdued.
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