Book Description: The amazing tale of a resourceful and
unscrupulous early-19th-century American adventurer who forges
his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan. In the year 1838, a
young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on
an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu
Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander
the Great. Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in
Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's 'The Man Who
Would be King', but the true story of his life is stranger than
fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan
set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love
affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East
India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan
monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a
Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he
would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region.
Using a trove of