5 comments about In a Far Country.

1. This was a fascinating book. It takes an honest look at subjects as diverse as; culture clashes, mission work, family struggles, man verses nature, government inner workings, and humanity's dual nature (good and evil). A whole cast of unsung heroes finally get their day. Unfortunately, it comes about 100 years too late. Although the author resides in our current day of political correctness, his characters do not. Frankly, I find them refreshing.
   
   The Alaskan frontier is shown as the mishmash that it must have been. Competing groups vied for their own goals and dreams. They inevitably mixed and influenced each other resulting in the lines that formerly demarcated distinct people groups being erased and blurred. The outcomes of this amalgamation ranged from laudable triumphs to scandalous tragedies.
   
   For some reason (maybe growing up in the hot South), I have always enjoyed books about Polar Regions. The first book I ever read was Jack London's Call of the Wild. I read In a Far Country in less than a week because the story kept my interest. It is one of the few books that I really hated to complete. I did not want to leave the characters.



2. This book rightly takes its place among the other tales of heroic arctic travel. It is well researched, the writing is sprightly, and the characterizations both compassionate and vivid.



3. It must have taken individuals of rare inner strength to even have the desire to go establish a Christian mission at Cape Prince of Whales, 55 miles across the Bering Strait to Russia and only 70 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Even more surprising to me was the number of women, single or married to missionaries, who went as well. Tom and Ellen Lopp were both single, that is until six weeks after they met.
   
   This is a story of the mission at Cape Prince of Wales, the Lopp's and of a dramatic rescue where Tom and seven Eskimo herders drove a heard of reindeer some 700 miles to rescue stranded sailors whose ships had become frozen in the ice. This was a trip to rival the other famous trip in the cold, but up until now has been little known.
   
   All in all, a most interesting book about life on the very edge of civilization.



4. This is a little known adventure story of missionary people, personalities, government polititians, native Americans, & foreigners. It has graphic illustrations of problems and errors made when dealing with different cultures in unknown and adverse climates. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it.



5. They certainly were a hardy lot. Those who chose to come Alaska in the latter part of the nineteenth century faced obstacles and hardships that most of us simply cannot comprehend. So why did they come? Despite the fact that the industry was in decline, fleets of whaling ships from such distant ports as New Bedford, Mass. and San Francisco, CA still made the trek to the Bering Sea each year in an effort to eke out a living. Those in the business of saving souls viewed Alaska as fertile territory to spread the Good News. And as the nineteeth century drew to a close there was yet another important reason why thousands would risk life and limb to come to the Alaskan wilderness. The Great Alaskan Gold Rush was on! "In A Far Country" is author John Taliaferro's remarkable account of the events that were unfolding in Alaska during these years.
   Tom and Ellen Lopp were missionaries who came to Alaska in the early 1890's. Tom was a Presbyterian from Indiana while Ellen was a Congregationalist who hailed from Minnesota. Both were assigned to a mission at Cape Prince of Wales on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula. Only a month after meeting in July 1892 Tom and Ellen were married. As things turned out Tom and Ellen would start a family and spend the next dozen years ministering to the Eskimos at Cape Prince of Wales. The work was dirty, difficult and exhausting but proved to be extremely rewarding nonetheless. During their years at Cape Prince of Wales the Lopps opened a mission school and assisted in the effort to establish a herd of reindeer in the area. The man who had attracted both Tom and Ellen to Alaska through an advertisment in "American Missionary" magazine was one Sheldon Jackson. Jackson, who was at the time the general agent for education for the new U.S. Territory of Alaska was absolutely convinced that bringing reindeer to Alaska was the key to the regions economic future. Reindeer were indigenous to neighboring Siberia and had been used there for centuries as both a source of food and for transportation. Jackson envisioned teams of reindeer driven sleds moving people, commodities and even the mail throughout the Alaskan territory. At the same time Sheldon Jackson argued that the reindeer could replace the dwindling numbers of caribou as the primary source of food for the native Eskimo population. "In A Far Country" details how large herds of reindeer would eventually be established in several areas of the Alaskan wilderness. Finally, John Taliaferro spends a great deal of time chronicling what became known as the Overland Relief Expedition. At the end of the summer of 1898 a total of 8 whaling ships who were operating in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska became trapped in the ice and were unable to leave the area. It was feared that unless help arrived in time more than 200 sailors would eventually starve to death. The Overland Relief Expedition was organized and Tom Lopp was tapped to lead the final leg of this Herculian rescue effort. What an incredible adventure!
   I found "In A Far Country" to be quite compelling reading indeed. The publishers quite wisely furnished a detailed map of the region at the beginning of the book and I found myself referring to it again and again. I find that inclusion of maps like this often greatly enhances my understanding of the events being discussed in the text. All in all this is a nicely written book about important history that has been largely forgotten. Recommended!

3 comments about Ralph Edwards of Lonesome Lake.

1. Ralph Edwards of lonesome lake is a book about carving out a life for ones family in a remote wilderness. This book is such a contrast to our technical world with cell phones, internet, e mail "Big Box shopping" malls. Our lives are so full but really so empty. I felt an extreme feeling of sadness after having read this book. Ralph Edwards and his wife are now dead after having lived a hard but full life. We all struggle through life with different goals and yet we all have to face death. I felt the sadness of Ralph Edwards when he realised that he was too old to be independant and look after himself. This book has to make us all stop and concider what we are doing and what is the purpose of life. What could possibly be more important than these questions?



2. This book is a sequel to "Crusoe of Lonesome Lake" by Leland Stowe, a quite successful book published in the late 1950s where the fascinating life of Ralph Edwards is biographed. Edwards, who can only be described as a 20th century pioneer, single-handedly carved out a homestead in the Canadian wilderness, nearly a hundred miles from his nearest neighbor.
   
   Although this book was interesting, the above-mentioned prequel by Leland Stowe was far better. In fact, in many ways I wish I had not read this one because Edwards' exploits ended on a high note in "Crusoe" whereas this book seemed to tarnish my image of the bigger-than-life Edwards portrayed in the earlier book. But, I realize that most people who read the prequel will want to know what eventually became of Edwards in his latter years, and this book answers many of those questions. I would simply admonish anyone who reads this book to absolutely get the prequel. If you read this book alone, you are getting far less than half the story of a remarkable man's life. "Crusoe" is much better written and considerably more moving.



3. I have read both books about the Edwards family & each has it's own merit. The main thing is that they tell the story of an extraordinary individual that wanted to carve out his own place on earth without the help of hardly anyone & certainly not the help of any government. He also saved a specie from almost curtain extinction, the Trumpeter Swan, and that alone should make him a hero to anyone who has ever seen one of these magnificent birds. After reading this book & " Grass Beyond the Mountain" I went to this Area of B.C. & came away with renewed respect for these people.

2 comments about The Great Belzoni: The Circus Strongman Who Discovered Egypt's Ancient Treasures, Second Edition (International Library of Historical Studies).

1. This is an excellent book. It is like taking the trip of a lifetime back to early 19th century Egypt



2. The beginning is very uninteresing. Belzoni's epypt adventures are not mentioned until your half way through the book.

No comments about Survivors: True Tales of Endurance.

5 comments about Race to the Pole: Tragedy, Heroism, and Scott's Antarctic Quest.

1. This is a great book. Scott and his men are true heroes. Their fortitude in the face of severe privation, relentless bone chilling cold and unimaginable pain and suffering is nothing short of awesome. Like the soldiers mentioned in the book who found inspiration in Scott's story, I too can now tap into an inner strength I didn't know I had. Thank you Sir Fiennes!



2. Having read "Last Place on Earth", this book, and the journals of Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Evans, and Cherry-Garrard, I can safely say that this book carefully cultivates on the most positive aspects of Scott, while hiding almost all of the negative; the little that was mentioned was casually dismissed as no fault of his own.
   
   Fiennes, a seemingly obsessive fan of Scott himself, has gone to great lengths to recreate Scott's manhauling techniques (albeit with modern clothing, gear, and expedition food) in his own transarctic expedition, if only to show that it can be done today. He completely wallpapers over the mistakes in Scott's assessment of dogs, skis, clothing, nutrition, and caloric intake, as well as Scott's poor judgement in setting cairns, preventing fuel loss, staying in tents during moderately bad weather, navigating, and stopping for scientific samples when his time and supplies were running short. This clearly shows this work to be more propaganda than a neutral look at the evidence.
   
   However, Fiennes brings out important background information on Scott not found in print today that proves helpful in better understanding Scott. For that, I bump up my rating to 2 stars.



3. After reading Roland Huntford's The Last Place On Earth, it's difficult not to wonder whether any book sympathetic to Robert Falcon Scott is equally biased in the opposite direction. However, the beauty of Ranulph Fiennes' perspective is that he's actually HAD decades of experience in polar exploration and travel, unlike the armchair-critic, Brit-loathing Huntford. Overall, I found this book very informative (if perhaps slightly too critical of Roald Amundsen), especially its emphasis on the freak weather Scott's polar party encountered, en route to Cape Evans from the South Pole, as the primary cause of the disaster that ensued. However, the last chapter is absolutely priceless for its utter dismantling of Huntford and his various excesses and pretenses, and for that reason alone the book is a valuable addition to the history of polar exploration.



4. Clearly, as has been stated, there is a de-constructive zeal that's been applied to almost all of our traditional heroes for decades, a trend I find deplorable and, I think, based on the most obvious of politically correct motives. At the end Fiennes identifies the national self-loathing and malaise that Britain has allowed itself to slide into, and into which America has been sliding for some time. A society and culture that despises itself can not have the will to defend itself. Fortunately in this case, Fiennes is one of the few on this planet that can speak with authority and from experience on the subject of polar man-hauling and general survival in those regions. Fiennes's de-construction of Huntford and subsequent biographers has changed my mind about Scott, a man about whom I had a most negative opinion since I read Huntford's "Scott & Amundsen" in 1990. Scott has been de-debunked and rehabilitated for me.



5. Fiennes set out to rehabilitate Scott from the shadow to which he had been relegated. My sense of Scott derived from some (maybe
   BBC) television dramatization comparing him to Amundsen. The image I retained is of a stiff-upper-lipped Englishman stubbornly mistreating his working class underlings, a kind of Franklin dragging his sea chests across the ice and assuming his gentleman's entitlement would somehow overcome the impious arctic conditions. Feinnnes shows that Scott was nothing of the sort but a fairly equitable and thorough man maybe more interested in the scientific results of his expeditions than merely achieving the record of being first to the pole. Although Fiennes doesn't explore Amundsen's personality thoroughly, Amundsen's desire to be first and the fact that he hides his intent from both Scott and the world makes him a lesser man than Scott. Also his use of dogs versus Scott's manhauling is not evidence of the humble explorer more connected to the environment. As the author shows both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages. And Scott abhorred both the working of ponies and dogs to death and their killing for food, although he did do it.
   
   At first I found the author's interjecting of his own formidable experiences irritating, especially when he discussed personal dynamics. Later in the book when Scott makes his fatal trek to the pole, the author's comparison of the limitations and risks of various actions comparing them to his own experiences gave a better understanding of the events leading to Scott's and his companions death: that it was due to unusual weather rather than foolishness or misjudgment. In fact this portion of the book was very exciting. On the whole the book is valuable to those of us intrigued with exploration. While these sorts of explorations are usually sponsored to demonstrate the power of empire, it is extraordinary what humans can do when put in a punishing environment. It is a bit like extreme sports but as the author points out when he and a companion were rescued from inevitable death while manhauling across the Antarctic, they had available communications and planes which plucked them out of danger. Scott on the other hand, without such technologies, had to pay the existential consequences. This is a good read.
   
   Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

No comments about In The Footsteps Of Daniel Boone (In the Footsteps).

5 comments about Desert Solitaire.

1. This is my favorite book. I consider Abbey to be a hippie environmentalist--a sort of modern day Thoreau. The book will suck you in and you'll be wishing you could run off to Moab and have a beer with Abbey.



2. An early environmentalist even before the term came into use. Ranks up there with Sand County Almanac and Silent Spring. A must read for those who care about the environment. Abbey predicted some of the water problems that now face the southwest.



3. I purchased this book because David Quammen referenced it in one of his books, and I really enjoy Quammen's books. It is listed on various websites and in some magazines as a "Nature Classic".
   
   I have visited and hiked the deserts and canyon in Utah and northern Arizona. That allowed me to feel a lot of what Abbey writes about. It is a special place. I wish I could go back and see Arches National Park when Abbey was there. (It was Arches National Monument at the time of his stay there.)
   
   While there are some controversial things in this book, and while I don't agree with everything Abbey writes, I have to say that I really hated to come to the end of this book. Besides the stories about nature, Abbey also writes about some of the human activities in this area.
   
   I think I understand why people call this a landmark book. The environmental movement was just starting in the sixties. (Does anyone else remember the green Ecology symbol?)



4. Sure, this book may speak strongly for the respect and preservation of the desert southwest, and for that, it deserves proper credit.
   
   But for me, it has had a much deeper impact. This is a lot more than just an argument that we should protect our wilderness, although it is easily that. Rather, I found it to be a profound guide on how to think and act in general, about pretty much everything, everywhere.
   
   This is one of the greatest books of the American twentieth century, a true classic, and everyone pondering how to think about and evaluate everything these days could surely benefit by reading it carefully.



5. In 1968 Edward Abbey wrote a memoir, Desert Solitaire, A Season In The Wilderness, that would instantly be hailed as a nature classic, as well as his bestselling work. While familiar with EA's name the only work of his I'd read up to this point was a woeful collection of the man's `poetry'. Believe me, when I say there's a definite reason for the quotes around the word poetry. Apparently the work is considered somewhat of a nature hymn, along the lines of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. This is a perfect example of poor criticism propagating myths down through the years. This is not to say that there is not some fine writing in DS, but neither its consistency nor tone are akin to Walden's....Although these events happened over 3 seasons, the book condenses them down into 1, for dramatic effect. It's a technique that can see such startling contradictions in the same book as this reluctant admission-
   
   `As I type these words, several years after the little episode of the gray jeep and the thirsty engineers, all that was foretold has come to pass. Arches National Monument has been developed. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the `visitation,' as they call it, mounts ever upward....Down at the beginning of the new road, at park headquarters, is the new entrance station and visitor center, where admission fees are collected and where the rangers are going quietly nuts answering the same three basic questions five hundred times a day: (1) Where's the john? (2) How long's it take to see this place? (3) Where's the Coke machine?'
   
   -& this contrapuntal admission that he basically understands why the previous lament was written:
   
   `Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not--at least there's nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me.'
   
   
   While the book is not going to make the reader drop the book & take a breath, like the best of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire is a book worth reading, not nearly so much because it is a paean to nature, although it occasionally is, but because it is an excellent portrayal of a man's state of being- a man who could be hypocritical, childish, write poorly, then surmount these flaws. If the same were true of most of EA's readers this last sentence would not be as cogent.

4 comments about The Man Who Mapped the Arctic: The Intrepid Life of George Back, Franklin's Lieutenant.

1. An incredibly well researched book. The Man Who Mapped the Arctic is a must read for anyone interested in Canadian and European history or Arctic exploration. This is not dull Canadian history! Peter Steele's writing is witty and engaging.



2. We need more of this kind of book in Canada.

   This was a fun read. The only complaint I have is the maps could have helped illustrate the routes taken.




3. As a resident of the Alaskan Arctic, I find it refreshing to read a book by a biographer who does not just sit at the computer, or camp out in a stately library somewhere. Steele, a doctor and mountaineer, as well as a biographer, actually went out and retraced the distant and remote routes across Northern Canada --the same routes of his subject--British explorer George Back. He followed the exploits of Back on foot, and also by canoe, boat and plane, including a forced landing on a remote lake.
   Steele also traveled to Back's birthplace in the Cheshire area of England, and the areas of France where he was held as a prisoner of war well before he reached he age of 20.
   Much has been written about a contemporary of Back's, the courageous John Franklin, but much less about Back himself. Perhaps this is because Franklin and his 129 crewmen perished in a tragic search for the Northwest Passage. Steele's book should help Arctic enthusiasts learn more about Back, Franklin's Lieutenant on three earlier Arctic expeditions.
   Back, who served in the British Navy as a teenager, and spent five years in French prisons, showed early maturity, a very hearty constitution and a strong will. He successfully explored vast areas of Northern Canada and discovered and traveled the Back River, including shooting its 83 rapids.
   Steele, reflecting his medical background, notes that Back died in his bed at a relatively advanced age (for that time) of 82 years old. Back kept very active, and was also a fine mapmaker and artist.
   Steele also provides a social and economic profile of England in the early and mid 1800's, to show the rather limited options for many bright and ambitious young citizens. Thus, Arctic exploration, despite all its dangers, became a way up and out from a rather entrenched power structure.
   I could feel the inner drive of explorers like Back, Franklin, Parry and others as they sailed out of English ports, bound for uncharted Arctic waters, and expected to be gone for years at a time, with no way of communicating good or bad news, or getting rescued. Kind of like our space program at present, although we do have much more communication, but still plenty of risk.
   Pick up this book like I did, during several months when the sun does not rise above the horizon in Arctic Alaska. Find a comfortable chair by a sturdy floor lamp, and call your Greenland Husky or other faithful dog to your side, and return again to the days of George Back and his Arctic explorations.
   Earl



4. It takes considerable flair and panache to write history in a way that makes it read like a novel and not very many authors have that ability. Canada's Pierre Berton has it! Dava Sobel and Simon Winchester are certainly up to the task! In "The Man Who Mapped the Arctic", Peter Steele demonstrated his rightful claim to membership on that short list. Steele, a physician who has spent most of his life in the North and an arctic adventurer and mountaineer in his own right, has eloquently told us the astonishing tale of George Back, Franklin's undeservedly obscure and unsung Lieutenant and his astonishing exploits in exploration that rival Samuel Hearne's or Lewis and Clark's in their extraordinary scope and difficulty.
   
   Steele's prose has painted a vivid picture of Back's working life as a Navy Lieutenant and explorer and the compelling setting in which the story takes place - endless waterfalls and rapids; excruciating clouds of mosquitoes or black flies; extreme temperature swings; backbreaking 90 to 100 pound loads hauled over strenuous ankle-breaking portages; the open water of Lake Winnipeg, Lake Superior and Great Bear and Great Slave Lake that might better be described as inland oceans when observed from the perspective of a canoe; changeable unpredictable weather; the dumb-founding athleticism of ten to twelve men paddling in perfect synchrony at 50 strokes per minute for hours on end singing, if you please, to provide a rhythm and take their minds off the numbing pain in their backs and shoulders; lost rations, near starvation and cannibalism; the stinging cold and near endless dark of sub-arctic winter camps; the political struggles, bickering, corporate fighting and espionage that occurred as a matter of course in the conflict between the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company; and much, much more.
   
   Of Back's cultural indoctrination by fire upon his arrival in Canada, for example, Steele wrote:
   
   "He knew nothing of the rival fur companies' years of bitter forest skirmishes, sniping from riverbanks at each others' canoes, occasionally taking prisoners, and resorting in extremis to arson and theft, kidnapping and murder - tantamount to open warfare." "Neither did he understand the cultural differences that might arise between himself and a disparate group of French Canadian voyageur canoemen, Indian hunters and Eskimo guides, who he expected would guide them through the most barren and inhospitable land anyone could imagine, among people utterly ignorant of intrusive Westerners and their strange ways."
   
   In other words, Steele has provided us with an exciting biography of a talented naval officer, explorer, mapmaker, outdoorsman and survivor who has languished for too long under the shadow of Franklin, his considerably less talented superior. The Yukon News praises "The Man Who Mapped the Arctic" by suggesting that it is destined to become a classic story of Canadian Arctic exploration. I concur.
   
   Paul Weiss

5 comments about Wayward Sailor.

1. I've only read four of Tristan Jone's books, with the first being The Incredible Voyage. I wasn't far into the book before it became obvious that there was a lot of fabrication and embellishment going on there. ICE! was even more far-fetched. And as Dalton pointed out in Wayward Sailor, the book ICE! was entirely fiction.

   Dalton's book serves to confirm what many of us already knew: Tristan Jones was less than truthful. What I was surprised to hear, though, is that Jones wasn't a very nice person in real life, either. He had far more enemies than friends and spent much of his time as an obnoxious drunk. He was not a trustwothy person; for example, he took "Outward Leg", a boat belonging to its manufacturer, and left it abandoned and trashed before completing the agreed route.

   But, nevertherless, I will still buy Tristan's books and plan to read them all. Tristan's writing skills are a bit rough around the edges, but he does tell a great story. The important thing is that the books are entertaining and everything in them must be taken with a grain of salt. I would recommend the books to everyone.

   While Tristan Jones greatly exagerated his "record voyages" and did not sail anywhere near the miles he claimed, he was still a great seamen and writer.




2. I find it interesting that someone would go to such great lengths to prove a book wrong. Its seems to me that Dalton had more to loose by not proving Tristan wrong than Tristan would from not doing the things in his books and then writting it as if he did.



3. 
   The other reviews say alot so I will only add that Jones was prominent enough to be on Larry King's talk show and feature in the IMAX film Race the Wind. Jones was not a very likeable character but he had a diffucult life with no family, education or money and few friends and he did what he could to survive. He had the makings of a very good writer and produced 16 books and many articles. He concealed the fact that he was gay until the very end of his life, at which time he had lost both his legs to diabetes and was destitute. He accomplished a lot with very little and if you accept his stories as fiction they are good reading. Only those who are really interested in Jones or sailing will enjoy the book as most of it is otherwise very boring.



4. ...that de-bunks the Tristian Jones self created "persona". It is clear that the end of the book was hard to write and researching the latter parts of TJ's life was made harder by his isolation abroad coupled with TJ's recognition that he was in the process of getting "caught out" and so made his life hard to research. This makes the end of the book rather flat - but it is worth it in its own right for the first two thirds.



5. This is a fascinating biography of an infuriating poseur. Tristan Jones, Royal Navy, had great skill as a teller of autobiographical tales of danger at sea and adventures ashore. Unfortunately, as Anthony Dalton demonstrates in a book that started out as an attempt to spread Jones's fame, it turns out that most (and possibly all) of his spellbinding tales are untrue. He made them up. They didn't happen.
   
   Old salts are expected to tell "sea stories." Memoirists, however, are not. It will come as a real disappointment to anyone who, like me, enjoyed the hell out of Jones's books, to discover that such wonderful reads like Ice! and The Incredible Voyage are effectively no more than tall tales. They remain great tall tales, I admit (so great you just want to keep on believing them), but fiction should be labeled as such.
   
   Public records revealed to Anthony Dalton that the old sea dog, who died in 1995, simply was not where he claimed to be when he claimed to be there. Dalton himself was reluctant to accept the evidence until it became overwhelming.
   
   Example: Jones wrote a compelling "memoir" entitled Heart of Oak about serving in the Royal Navy in World War II. It's so good that even the prominent, crotchety critic Paul Fussell mentioned its virtues. Turns out Navy records show that Tristan Jones didn't even join the RN till World War II was over. And so it goes.
   
   I used to be a big fan of his, too.

5 comments about Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration.

1. Off the Map is a wonderfll book. It is basically a summary of world exploration from Marco Polo in 1271 to Umberto Nobile in 1928. There are separate chapters about each explorer, all arranged in chronological order with each chapter about 10-20 pages each. The chapter lengths are just right in that they are not too long, but also not lacking for detailed information. Each chapter also has a map that illustrates where the particular explorer travelled, which was extremely helpful. There are also 3 separate sections of illustrations and photos which helps give a visual picture of the explorers.
   Overall, this book is packed with information and is written in such a way that each chapter is told like a story and each story takes you back in time to a different era. If you are intertested in world exploration or world history, then this book is a must read. I enjoyed it very much.



2. For a blend of history and true-life stories of survival and adventure, try the classics told in OFF THE MAP: TALES OF ENDURANCE AND EXPLORATION. Fergus Fleming is a narrative historian with many books to his name: OFF THE MAP uses high drama, a touch of humor, and lively themes to bring to life the journeys and sometimes the harrowing experiences of explorers from early to modern times. Perfect for the history buff who enjoys the action and high drama of true-life drama paired with the insights of historical fact and biography.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



3. The author's selection of great travel/exploration/endurance stories is disappointing. Why leave out Raleigh, Lief Eriksson (or any of the Norsemen for that matter), or many others. The author is sloppy with his narration, and discloses a penchant for left-wing viewpoints. But the biggest disappointment is the repetitive nature of the accounts. There are so many arctic/antarcitic exploration narratives, they all blur together. One can't even distinguish the truly important ones from the completely insignificant ones in the memory after finishing the book. A more judicious choice of inclusion would have made the book more worthwhile. And not leaving out profoundly important discovery stories at the expense of including completely obscure and idiosyncratic stories. Doing the latter is okay if you're doing a book on obscure travel stories, but it is too much to include them all with major discoveries. All in all, the author is indulging himself at the expense of the reader.



4. Everyone hates negative reviews, but if you give a negative review a negative rating -- and there's more than one disappointed reader here -- don't say no one warned you. Fleming is a guy who has figured out that anyone can write books; for a discussion of this "democratizing" phenomenon, see Andrew Keen's just-published "Cult of the Amateur." What Fleming has NOT figured out is that there was no money available for pure science -- let alone "the spirit of pure adventure" he so relishes -- in the 16th century, period. Expeditions HAD to be profitable. He beats the dead horse of Greed without once stopping to ask himself, "Is there something I don't know about the world of my ancestors?"
   
   The first five stories were dull recapitulations of journeys I happen to know something about, in which he repeats myths that were disproved long ago. What lay ahead of me were stories about adventurers I did NOT know much about, and I wasn't in the mood for poorly written fiction. I was actually in the rarest of moods -- to go through all the trouble and expense of returning a book I only paid $12 for!



5. This is a very good book to me. Short concise tales of many different explorers. Has led me to other books about individual explorers that I found more to my interest that i wanted to learn about more indepthly, if that is a word.