Product Description

Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat, a violent, headstrong youth posted to the wilds of Siberia and Mongolia before the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron - now in command of a lethally effective rabble of cavalrymen - conquered Mongolia, the last time in history a country was seized by an army mounted on horses. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering everyone he suspected of irreligion or of being a Jew. And his is a story that rehearses later horrors in Russia and elsewhere. James Palmer's book is an epic recreation of a forgotten episode and will establish him as a brilliant popular historian.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18980 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
James Palmer was born in 1981, lives in Beijing and has travelled extensively in East and Central Asia. This is his first book. He brings to it a knowledge of comparative religion as well as a deep fascination with the cultures and history of China and Mongolia.

Customer Reviews

A character too crazy for fiction
I've been fascinated by this period of Mongolian history ever since I found a musty old copy of Ossendowski's Beasts, Men and Gods in a used bookstore years ago, so I was very happy to find a new look at those times in this book. Finding sources or historical writing on this period is difficult, at least here in the US, since Outer Mongolia almost seems to be a fictitious country in itself. Fortunately, James Palmer has travelled the East and waded through the various scraps and pieces of its history and pulled together a picture of a fascinating, if horrendous, figure who stamped his mark upon the era. Ossendowski's book, while purportedly true, reads like a pulp adventure novel, and his account of Baron Ungern certainly makes a modern reader believe that he must have been made up. Not so, of course, even though the picture that Palmer is able to put together of the man in some ways seems even more extreme. The Baron, or Bloody Baron, or Bloody Mad Baron, as he has variously been called, was all too real a person, and his insane, murderous actions were all too common during this period.

There is a perception in the modern West that Buddhism is perhaps unique amongst the world's major faiths in not lending itself to the kinds of wars and conflicts that, for example, Christianity and Islam have been such prominent players in. And while its certainly true that Buddhism has been a relatively peaceful religion, history, and certainly this history, shows how even the dharma can be turned towards violence, and how ethnic divisions, superstitions and unjust conditions can be exploited by cunning leaders to turn even the most peaceful doctrine into a permission for bloody conflict. Ungern was a curious mix of Christian, occultist and mystical Buddhist wannabe, driven by a belief in prophecy and armoring himself with magical charms (who can say they didn't work? He certainly never took a bullet on the battlefield with those charms hanging from his neck). In some ways the template for the kind of Aristocratic European Occultist that would later become such a stock character by way of the Nazis, his life and exploits make for fascinating reading, even if only as a cautionary tale about the kind of beast that wars and prejudice can create out of man.

My only complaint about this book is the lack of photographs. The author describes a number of photos of the Baron at various points in his story, but none of them are included outside of the dust jacket. I hope the publisher can add these in future editions.

Stretched Out Term Paper
Like several of the reviewers have already pointed out, source material for Baron Ungern seems quite thin on the ground and at various times it feels like the author is grasping for a thesis. In fact at times the book read like a term paper, that had been stretched to achieve a book length. It also tells in the prose. Glaring lack of photos. Especially galling when he's describing a particular photo, as happens several times. I felt the book could have done a lot better had it concentrated more on the wider picture of the civil war, both in China and Russia. It was a relief to have finished the book and I do not recommend it. First, because in it's attempt to be somewhat of a biography of Baron Ungern, it fails to satisfy due to no fault of the author, but for what may be a lack of primary sources. Secondly, while failing in it's primary task Palmer again fails to give a broad sweep picture of the Russian Civil War, the flight of the White Russians and numerous other more interesting matters. Did you know that Manchuria was virtually a White Russian colony? Well you'd better buy some other book to read about that.

A HEROIC MONSTER
This book is a well-written and lucid account of a fascinating figure.The baron was a man out of his time,he would have been perfectly at home as victorian adventurer and he might have died peacefully in his bed.As it was in a new century of political turmoil, his career was short and bloody.The author deftly decribes the life and times of a man who pre-figured the holocaust and the worst aspects of the twentieth century.The fact that he was also a devout buddist is just one of his contradictions.The only real flaw with book is the lack of illustrations.