(Spoilers)
They are Flight of the Phoenix, Sufferings in Africa and Skeletons on the Zahara
A brief word about each:
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The first listed is by Elleston Trevor which I suspect almost everyone has seen one of the two movies made from it
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The second is by Riley who captained a ship wrecked off the west coast of Africa at the beginning of the 19th century
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Dean King used Riley's book and other sources to write in detail about the plight of Riley and his crew as well as about the area in general
All three books are about survival in the desert. I have always wondered how accurate Phoenix is in multiple respects. One question I had is whether anyone, given the very logical arguments against marching to try to reach an oasis, would attempt it. The other is whether under the incredibly challenges conditions in the desert whether a plane could be created from the wreckage. (The most surprising thing about this I won't reveal.)
I think the first movie that was made from it was a classic with great acting. (There is one credited actor left, Barrie Chase who is also the sole credited survivor from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World although because there were so many extras, I suspect quite a few people, more than 60 years later, are still with us.)
The remake was not a very good movie imho and one big reason is that the engineer was a German and in 1963 ww2 was not only fairly fresh in the memory of audiences but presumably every passenger almost certainly had fought in that war although the German said, "I was not involved." Bottom line, this dynamic could not be recreated in the remake made 40 years later and the engineer character in the second movie I did not find very compelling.
The two books dealing with the 19th century shipwreck are amazing. I frankly found the 19th century writing a little challenging, but it turns out that Lincoln read the book as a young man and was influenced in his attitude towards slavery by it.
I think Dean King's book is much more accessible.
All three books deal with survival (and what people will do to survive) and all three books have a remarkable surprise/twist and even though FotF is fiction, real life provided a bigger surprise in Riley's story than the fictional one.
Very interested in discussing.
by relesabe