No comments about Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia.

5 comments about KON-TIKI: Across the Pacific.

1. This was one of my summer reads and I found it incredibly entertaining. The story of how a bunch of crazy Norwegians, many of whom were WWII vets, floated across the South Pacific on a balsa raft during the middle of the 20th century is one of the best adventure stories I have ever read. The line between scientific investigation and insanity is thin on this one. The men set off to prove a link between Ancient Peruvians and Polynesians by proving that the Peruvians had sailed as far as Polynesia on balsa rafts. The group procures its wood from the dangerous, lawless countryside of Peru, floats it down a river to the sea, and sets forth on an epic adventure on a scrappy looking sail driven raft they slapped together using diagrams based off ancient documents.
   
   The accounts of flying fish, battles with sharks, and struggles against the elements are highly entertaining. They drifted across seas drawn by the currents through areas of the ocean free of shipping lanes, an adventure unparalleled for its time. Their raft literally became a home to hundreds of sea creatures. They encountered sea creatures that nobody had ever seen before. Although their voyage seems crazy, it was really done and I was actually relieved when the raft broke up on a reef on a South Pacific Island and the men were able to swim to safety.
   
   If you've ever dreamed of doing something crazy in the name of scholarly pursuits, or if you like a good adventure tale, this is a good read. Its also an interesting piece of history and Thor Heyerdahl went on to receive hundreds of awards for his incredible accomplishment.



2. A very wow story.
   
   When the author was told that a particular people's migration was impossible, given the ocean going technology and distance involved, he set out to prove it wasn't.
   
   Crazy, brave, or whatever, but a pretty impressive real-life adventure tale, along with a spot of first-hand scientific historical research.



3. This book was in great physical condition...it just looks way older than I expected...you know how old paperbacks get...kind of yellowish and pages don't totally lay flat...It won't stop me from reading it, and it was a bargain for the price, but I am not sure it was LIKE NEW.



4. We recently had the pleasure of visiting Oslo, Norway and went to the Kon-Tiki Museum while there. They were sold out of the English language version of this book. I had read it in the mid-fifties and had lost the book sometime over the years. This purchase was to "re-stock" my library with what I have always considered to be a wonderful adventure story. I can recommend this book to anyone in the GPS generation who cannot imagine making passage across the Pacific as did Thor Heyerdahl. It's a wonderful story.



5. How did the Incan people make it to the Galapagos islands and the islands of Indonesia from the mainland of South America. Rumor has it that the Incan people used balsa wood to make a raft and drift all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Heyerdahl and a team of people are about to find out if this method really would work. What are they going to eat and drink on the way over? What sea creatures and new species of fish will they find along the way? Will they make it alive? Read this book to experience one of the greatest sea adventures ever written.

No comments about Stowaway.

No comments about Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives.

3 comments about The Wheel of Life: Bunny Allen, A Life of Safaris and Romance.

1. I most deffinitely DO NOt reccommend this book to anyone who is expecting to read a classic africana book. There is hardly any mention to actual hunting, guns or otherwise much else to do with Safari life. This book is simply a recolection of Mr. Allen`s advances with women while on Safari. Certainly, no gentleman would write anything like this. To me the book sometimes fell in the distaste of erotic novels!!!! DO NOT BUY IT.



2. Enjoy hunting stories by authors such as Peter Capstick, J.A. Hunter, Robert Ruark, or Lincoln Hughes? If so, do not waste your time or money on this piece of trash. You won't find much about big game hunting lore, exciting hunts, firearms used or the like. What you will find is Bunny Allen's tales of his exciting times between the sheets, seducing the wives and daughters of hunting clients. Along the way he went through three wives of his own. Moreover, he names all of his paramours, perhaps to their everlasting embarrassment. I know of another well known professional hunter whose erotic appetites may exceed his hunting ability, but at least he hasn't been fool enough to write about it. Anyone contemplating an African safari (and I have been on nine of them) should know that this type of boorish behavior IS NOT typical of professional hunters, the vast majority of whom are exactly that--professional. What I do find surprising is that apparently Allen was able to conduct these affairs for so many years without a cuckolded husband or irate father finding out and giving him the thrashing he so richly deserved.



3. This was an excellent book. Bunny Allen was famous for being infamous. I've read this and his first 2 books as well, with this one taking the whole of the other two and then some. Stories about hunting, PH's, trackers, clients, fooling around and life in Kenya ARE what this book is about. Life in colonial Kenya was pretty wild, and we're not talking about the animals, and this book merely reflects a slice of that time. The saying used to go something like "Are you married or are you from Kenya?".

1 comments about David Douglas: Explorer and Botanist.

1. The adventures of an ardent plant lover/collector during the 1820s and 1830s. David Douglas documented, collected, and returned to England over 200 new species of plants commonly found in contemporary gardens. The Douglas fir, arguably the most significant timber source of the 20th century, is named for him. He walked more than 10,000 miles during his travels across North America enduring many hardships while experiencing an unexplored wilderness. His interaction with native peoples demonstrated his inate skill as a diplomat.
   His wonder at the marvels of nature will resonate with any plant lover.

5 comments about Tracks in the Sea : Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans.

1. This is a great book for anyone with an interest in or passion for sailing, navigation, mapping and charting or who holds an interest in the challenges of early explorers.



2. Maury's life, rising from the humble origins of a farming family in Virginia and then Tennessee, to a career as an internationally renowned scientist, is quite interesting, and generally well told by author Chester Hearn. Most scientists would feel their careers were a success if they made a few contributions to their area of science. Maury's genius invented two whole sciences: oceanography and marine astronomy. He significantly improved navigation by finding "tracks in the sea," the patterns which numerous currents and winds follow all over the globe. Perhaps because he sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, he became a relatively obscure figure. Since he had an enduring influence on the human race's knowledge of the oceans, he deserves to be better known. This book will help, and is well worth reading.



3. Mr. Hearn's splendid account of the life of the self-taught Matthew Maury is one that should be read by anyone with the remotest interest in sailing or the industrial revolution. He should also be of interest to those who want a concrete account of the benefits of "data-mining" in which miscellaneous, disparate sources of information are aggregated into something which is tremendously useful.

   Maury took crates of old ship logs, and extracted the data about weather and currents as a function of date and location, and produced ingenious maps of the sea that could be used to plot voyages that minimized the time of passage. In the age of the American clipper ships, the time saved could be quite substantial, even amounting to as much as factor of two over the haphazard routes used by the intuitive captains of the day.

   The reduction of the data and the production of the maps was carried out by only a handful of men at the U.S. Naval Observatory, but produced tremendous economic advantages to those who used them. They were quickly adopted by the merchant marine, and by cleverly requiring the recipients of the latest maps to turn over to him logs taken in a standard format, he was able to gather tons of new data for ever-improving successive maps. Maury also discovered the feasibility for the route of the first transatlantic cable, and fought to establish the first weather bureau in the US.

   He also brought about the convening of a Brussels Marine meteorology Conference in 1853 that was attended by nine countries and resulted in the adoption of a uniform method of gathering and disseminating the information among the world. Not bad for a simple Lieutenant! His quarrels with the jealous Joseph Henry (of electromagnetic induction fame) and others of his ilk are instructive to those interested in stories of how pettiness and obstructionism of powerful men can be overcome by men of true ability.

   This story is well researched and ably told by Mr. Hearn, and is another exciting adventure of the heroes who made the industrial revolution.




4. This is simply a wonderfully written book about an almost forgotten man, Matthew Fontaine Muray.
   
   Maury lived in the golden days of sail, the 1800's. In those days, the ocean was a big, mysterious, and dangerous place. Sailors had decent charts of the continents, and by the middle of the century. they had decent chronometers to help them navigate (find the Longitude). But what they did not have was a set of charts showing where the winds blew when. Sure, they had some knowledge, gained by long experience, but no scientific knowledge.
   
   What Maury did was to make a life-long scientific study of the winds and currents around the world, with a view of shortening sailing times, thus reducing expenses and increasing safety. At first glance, this does not sound like much, but it took reading literally hundreds of thousands of logs to collect this information, then making charts showing the direction and strength of the wind and current in every month of the year.
   
   Did Maury's efforts work? Would you call shaving a month off a sailing trip from New England to Rio worthwhile? This was the typical result of skippers who followed Maury's charts.
   
   He also 'invented', to a large degree, the science of oceanography, and did a lot to standardize and strengthen the science of meteorology.
   
   Many think this information has been rendered useless by powered ships. Wrong. People who sail long distances always have a current copy of this type of chart onboard, and plan their itineraries around the winds and tides. Professional seamen, especially of very large ships, also continue to use this information, as the sea can overpower even enormous ships like supertankers.
   
   If you enjoy reading books like Dava Sobel's book Longitude, about John Harrison and his clocks, you will equally enjoy Tracks in the Sea. Highly recommended.



5. In the days before computers there was Matthew Fontaine Maury. Almost unknown today, Maury was a navigation and sailing genius, a Lieutenant in the US Navy, who was the father of modern navigation and ocean science. He was a land lubber.
   
   During the age of sail longitude was an uncertain calculation. As a result, it was often impossible for ships to know exactly where they were. After the invention on the chronometer, things improved, but chronometers being expensive, route planning was a hit or miss thing. As a result, for the most part, navigation was anecdotal. There were no highways in the seas, no scientifically determined sailing truisms or protocols, and hundreds of ships were lost each year.
   
   Until Maury, knowledge of prevailing winds and currents had advanced little from Columbus. But between 1842 and 1861, he and his staff mapped the ocean's great surface currents and wind systems. They showed ship captains how to shave weeks, even months from voyages. Tracks in the Sea is the biography of this remarkable, self taught, self made man whose remarkable career culminated as head of the U.S. Navel Observatory. In a world interconnected by maritime commerce, Maury's work was critically important, not just to Americans, by to all nations.
   
   This is an amazing story. To have compiled the thousands and thousands of ship's logs and sailing observations, drawing trends and systematic sailing instructions, by month, for all the oceans of the world, has to be one of man's most astounding scientific achievements. This is a most remarkable work about a most remarkable American.

No comments about Tibet Land of Gentlemen Brigands: Retracing the Steps of Alexandra David-Neel (Journey Through the World & Nature).

1 comments about Soul Snatchers: A Quest for True Human Beings.

1. I finished this book in four days, and what a terrific journey the author takes us on. From the deserts of New Mexico, where he gets guidance from a 102-year-old Native American named Nino Cochise, to the Swamps of Florida, where he meets a most unusual evangelist and has encounters with things he cannot explain, to the wilds of Washington State, where he and his team experiment with a method known as "dowsing" to attempt to track the Forest Giants, Robert W. Morgan has had a life's journey most would be rather envious of. He has met with Native American elders, elderly cowboys who were around in the time of the Wild West, disbelieving skeptics, scientists and other luminaries, and over his life's journey, he has experienced unusual phenomenon, which may or may NOT be connected to the Forest Giant People (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Omah-ah, Dsonoqua and many other variations of names for these unique beings). Morgan writes in a style of absolute comfort and a sense as if he is sharing private secrets around a campfire. The only rating I can give on this book is an 11 out of 10!!!!!! GET THIS BOOK!!!!!! It is available at Product Listing - and is terrific for Summer reading, or for curling up beside a roaring fire in colder weather.

5 comments about ONE WAVE AT A TIME.

1. I literally couldn't put this book down. I was captured from the first chapter to the last page. This is an incredible story of an Alaskan family surviving on the land, their hard work and devout faith and love for each other. I now have to visit Alaska!
   
   This book would make a great Christmas gift!



2. This book would read as a wonderful fictional tale, however, realizing that it is indeed a non-fiction reading makes it even more impressive. A wonderful story emphasizing family values that so often seem over-looked in society today. This is a 'must read' for any person looking for an uplifting, spiritual story that doesn't harp on the common cliches that so many new releases seem to in the present.



3. ONE WAVE AT A TIME
   I had the pleasure of reading this book right after it was published. I couldn't put it down once I had cracked it open! The adventures, tests and trials the Brown family survived were a testament to how powerful love and determination can be in the face of huge experiences - some wonderful and some so frightening that it seems impossible to fathom. The Browns are truly an amazing family. They are close-knit - not just out of necessity, but out of an authentic, unwavering devotion to each other.
   
   When Billy Brown lost his parents and sister as a teenager (as if that wasn't bad enough) then to top off the horror, the Texas court system, his father's advisors and business partners failed the boy miserably, taking anything they could get their greedy hands on, he could have completely shut down, immobilized by what I can only categorize as a most justifiable anger. Instead, he embarked on the journey of a lifetime - one which I have to say I envy - even during the overwhelmingly hard stuff.
   
   One thing I noticed throughout the entire read was the unabashed love the man has for his wife and kids. He has a right to be proud of them all. They are a force of love, purity, and innocence in a world gone mad with trivialities. Billy Brown and his beautiful family are a treasure in and of themselves. He has taken me in my dreams to the vast Alaskan wilderness and has shown me the majesty of her nature, the value of family and the capacity of the human spirit for unity, survival and continuation. My hat goes off to them and my heart goes out to them.
   
   To Billy: You did good. Your legacy will continue through the amazing family you've shared with us and the life stories you have left with us.
   
   In a nutshell, theirs is a story not to be missed!



4. If you have never read a book you could not put down, you need to start reading "One Wave At A Time." This is one tremendous and heartwarming true story of one man's tragedy, saga, perseverance, survival, and the sheer will to live and provide for his close knit family. Each of the heart-stopping chapters would make a wonderful book. If you think you have problems, read this book and you will be thankful that your problems are just minor. I am thankful that this man put his story into print. My heart and admiration goes out to him and to his family.



5. One of the best books I have ever read. The human spirit never ceases to amaze me, and the nature of that is captured in this book. I am awed.