Richard Halliburton can be counted on to lead his reader into strange places, into hilarious difficulties, into new appreciations of history and romance—and never to qualift his outrageous philosophy of reckless living with a single sober moral.
He proved this with his Royal Road to Romance, in which he showed that a young man can see the world without a cent in his pocket, and have a whale of a time doing it. Hundreds of thousands of people bought it and clamored for more, which materialized in The Glorious Adventure, Halliburton's adventures in the land of old myths and legends, and New Worlds to Conquer in which he led his readers over the old trails of Cortez and of the old Spanish discoverers.
The Flying Carpet is his latest, his most modern book—in which he takes us around the world by airplane. Timbuctoo, because it was far away and mysterious, was his first destination. From there, the author and his pilot-companion, Moye Stephens, follow a "royal road to romance" through the sky, dropping down on Fez, Morocco and the French Foreign Legion, the Holy Land, Galilee, Baghdad in mysterious Arabia, Persia, and India; flyinf over the world's highest mountain, Mt. Everest, investigating Singapore, speeding to Borneo to visit the white Ranee whose husband rules half a million head hunters, and ending in Manila, making airplane records, enjoying unprecedented thrilling experiences, flying into remote places where airplanes had never been heard of before.
These enviable adventures are told gaily and dramatically. Their footloose spirit, as free as the air through which the Flying Carpet sailed, will prove fatal to the contentment of those readers who have not yet achieved the realization of their own travel dreams.
—from the dust jacket
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