Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski was a Polish writer, journalist, traveler, globetrotter, explorer and university professor. He is best known for his novels on Lenin and the Russian Civil War, a war in which he took part. Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski was born May 27, 1876, on his family's manor near Ludza in the Vitebsk gubernate. He studied at the famous gymnasium in Kamieniec Podolski, but he moved with his father, a renowned doctor, to Saint Petersburg, where he graduated from a Russian-language school. Then he joined the mathematical-physical faculty of the local university, where he studied chemistry. As an assistant to professor Aleksander Zalewski, he traveled to many distant areas, including Siberia, the Caucasus and the Altay Mountains.