Tragic Shores - Thomas H. Cook
A record of visits to some of the darkest places of the world, to the scenes of historic atrocities and human suffering, Tragic Shores is not the usual subject matter you expect from a travel memoir, certainly not from an author of this name. Surprisingly however, crime thriller writer Thomas H. Cook's fascination with visiting some of the saddest places on Earth over decades of travel is not all as grim and depressing as you might think, each of the locations visited offering unexpected moments of reflection, personal introspection and collectively a wider perspective on the history and the nature of humanity. Tragic Shores , for example, opens with pilgrimages to two contrasting sites of human misery; Lourdes and Auschwitz. The connections and the comparisons between these two locations are valid, both places being a focus of human suffering and pain, and as such, places that can't help but be defined, affected and tainted by their history. Reflecting on the vulgarity of the...