What do you think?
Rate this book
Among the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific
A fabulous account of hunting, trapping and recording mammal species in the Pacific Islands. Twenty-five years ago, a zoologist from the Australian Museum in Sydney set off to research the mammals of the Pacific Islands. Starting with a survey of one of the most inaccessible islands in Melanesia that young scientist found himself ghost-whispering, snake wrestling, quadoi hunting and plunging waist-deep into a sludge of maggot-infested faeces in search of a small bat that turned out not to be earth-shatteringly interesting. Now one of Australias greatest scientists, Tim Flannery looks back on his ground-breaking fieldwork. With accounts of discovering, naming and sometimes eating animal species new to science, and stories of historic expeditions and colourful local customs, he takes us on an enthralling journey through some of the most diverse and spectacular environments on Earth.
268 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2011
24 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Tim Flannery
132 books388 followersTim Flannery is one of Australia's leading thinkers and writers.
An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, he has published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and many books. His books include the landmark works The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers, which has been translated into more than 20 languages and in 2006 won the NSW Premiers Literary Prizes for Best Critical Writing and Book of the Year.
He received a Centenary of Federation Medal for his services to Australian science and in 2002 delivered the Australia Day address. In 2005 he was named Australian Humanist of the Year, and in 2007 honoured as Australian of the Year.
He spent a year teaching at Harvard, and is a founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and the National Geographic Society's representative in Australasia. He serves on the board of WWF International (London and Gland) and on the sustainability advisory councils of Siemens (Munich) and Tata Power (Mumbai).
In 2007 he co-founded and was appointed Chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a coalition of community, business, and political leaders who came together to confront climate change.
Tim Flannery is currently Professor of Science at Maquarie University, Sydney.
An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, he has published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and many books. His books include the landmark works The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers, which has been translated into more than 20 languages and in 2006 won the NSW Premiers Literary Prizes for Best Critical Writing and Book of the Year.
He received a Centenary of Federation Medal for his services to Australian science and in 2002 delivered the Australia Day address. In 2005 he was named Australian Humanist of the Year, and in 2007 honoured as Australian of the Year.
He spent a year teaching at Harvard, and is a founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and the National Geographic Society's representative in Australasia. He serves on the board of WWF International (London and Gland) and on the sustainability advisory councils of Siemens (Munich) and Tata Power (Mumbai).
In 2007 he co-founded and was appointed Chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a coalition of community, business, and political leaders who came together to confront climate change.
Tim Flannery is currently Professor of Science at Maquarie University, Sydney.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
January 24, 2013
Rating = 3.5 stars
This was perhaps a little less interesting than Throwim Way Leg because the focus here was more on zoology than anthropology. Not that I don't enjoy reading about rare bats and birds and rodents, but a girl needs some penis gourds and ancient blood feuds to spice things up.
Whatever's missing early in the book with regard to culture is made up for in the chapter about Fiji, with stories of cannibalism and other strange practices. Cannibalism was such an integral part of Fijian culture that the proper greeting when encountering the tribal headman was "EAT ME." Yeah, baby. No further comment.
Flannery makes some good arguments for how cannibalism made a certain amount of sense among isolated island societies.
Tim Flannery's always a good sport about sharing his most embarrassing moments. My favorite one in this book took place on the French-speaking island of New Caledonia. Tim's French was rusty, but that didn't stop him from trying. He went into a pharmacy to buy some preservative for the animal specimens he was collecting. In French, the word preservatif refers not to formaldehyde, but to a certain prophylactic device. So it's not surprising that the druggist wanted to chase Tim out of the shop when he asked in French for "condoms for dead animals."
Should you ever need to know, the correct word is formol.
Tim Flannery has a gift for writing about scientific exploration without a lot of jargon or boring descriptions. His books are perfect for average people with an interest in animals and exotic places. No advanced degrees required. His books never have enough photos for me, so keep a list of the animals he mentions, and look them up online. Most of them are even more beautiful and/or bizarre than his descriptions can convey.
This was perhaps a little less interesting than Throwim Way Leg because the focus here was more on zoology than anthropology. Not that I don't enjoy reading about rare bats and birds and rodents, but a girl needs some penis gourds and ancient blood feuds to spice things up.
Whatever's missing early in the book with regard to culture is made up for in the chapter about Fiji, with stories of cannibalism and other strange practices. Cannibalism was such an integral part of Fijian culture that the proper greeting when encountering the tribal headman was "EAT ME." Yeah, baby. No further comment.
Flannery makes some good arguments for how cannibalism made a certain amount of sense among isolated island societies.
Tim Flannery's always a good sport about sharing his most embarrassing moments. My favorite one in this book took place on the French-speaking island of New Caledonia. Tim's French was rusty, but that didn't stop him from trying. He went into a pharmacy to buy some preservative for the animal specimens he was collecting. In French, the word preservatif refers not to formaldehyde, but to a certain prophylactic device. So it's not surprising that the druggist wanted to chase Tim out of the shop when he asked in French for "condoms for dead animals."
Should you ever need to know, the correct word is formol.
Tim Flannery has a gift for writing about scientific exploration without a lot of jargon or boring descriptions. His books are perfect for average people with an interest in animals and exotic places. No advanced degrees required. His books never have enough photos for me, so keep a list of the animals he mentions, and look them up online. Most of them are even more beautiful and/or bizarre than his descriptions can convey.
August 15, 2024
A fascinating account of the rather adventurous scientific exploration of the islands of the south-west Pacific in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Encounters with people from different Melanesian cultures - their lives shaped by intense history. The discovery of previously undescribed mammals. And reflections on the special circumstances that the size, age, and remoteness of the islands have on their fauna and flora.
«The constant moisture had created an enchanted land filled with trees I didn't recognise. Some, I guessed, were akin to Australia's grevilleas, but they had flowers and leaves so huge that they appeared monstrous. Others were impossible for me to classify: they had waxen buds shaped like miniature spacecraft or new growth of the most fantastic shapes and colours. They were quite literally like nothing else on Earth: members of plant families that are unique to New Caledonia's mountains. Plant families are mostly ancient, and these plants had somehow survived on their island ever since it split from Australia. Since then a vegetable kingdom of such uniqueness had sprung up, making one dream of other worlds.»
«That night I saw things that I never imagined existed — I was in a Through the Looking-Glass world where life, shaped by ninety million years of splendid isolation, had created such hunters and hunted, plants and parasites they all might as well have originated in a distant galaxy.
Each leaf, each twig beside the path, was festooned with lichen and mosses big and small, their surfaces glistening in the torchlight with new-fallen droplets of rain. There were no possums, monkeys or indeed any terrestrial mammals in this world. Instead the leaves were grazed by slugs— huge, square, brightly patterned slugs, the largest ten centimetres from head to tail. They seemed to exist in every colour of the rainbow: some bright yellow with red lines, others grey with black lines, tan with yellow lines, or white with black.
The psychedelic molluscs moved through the silence of the night with all the solemn majesty of the moon, leaving in their wake silvery traces of their travels. Munching silently on the rotting vegetation that was their sustenance, they progressed so smoothly that their only movement seemed to come from the breathing-hole on their backs, which opened and closed in hypnotic slow motion.»
Encounters with people from different Melanesian cultures - their lives shaped by intense history. The discovery of previously undescribed mammals. And reflections on the special circumstances that the size, age, and remoteness of the islands have on their fauna and flora.
«The constant moisture had created an enchanted land filled with trees I didn't recognise. Some, I guessed, were akin to Australia's grevilleas, but they had flowers and leaves so huge that they appeared monstrous. Others were impossible for me to classify: they had waxen buds shaped like miniature spacecraft or new growth of the most fantastic shapes and colours. They were quite literally like nothing else on Earth: members of plant families that are unique to New Caledonia's mountains. Plant families are mostly ancient, and these plants had somehow survived on their island ever since it split from Australia. Since then a vegetable kingdom of such uniqueness had sprung up, making one dream of other worlds.»
«That night I saw things that I never imagined existed — I was in a Through the Looking-Glass world where life, shaped by ninety million years of splendid isolation, had created such hunters and hunted, plants and parasites they all might as well have originated in a distant galaxy.
Each leaf, each twig beside the path, was festooned with lichen and mosses big and small, their surfaces glistening in the torchlight with new-fallen droplets of rain. There were no possums, monkeys or indeed any terrestrial mammals in this world. Instead the leaves were grazed by slugs— huge, square, brightly patterned slugs, the largest ten centimetres from head to tail. They seemed to exist in every colour of the rainbow: some bright yellow with red lines, others grey with black lines, tan with yellow lines, or white with black.
The psychedelic molluscs moved through the silence of the night with all the solemn majesty of the moon, leaving in their wake silvery traces of their travels. Munching silently on the rotting vegetation that was their sustenance, they progressed so smoothly that their only movement seemed to come from the breathing-hole on their backs, which opened and closed in hypnotic slow motion.»
September 14, 2015
Mr. Flannery is one of those from the school of "hunt down one of everything and kill it" culture. I till wonder why they're called scientists, what happens when they catch the one and only left of anything and kill it? This kind of thinking is part of the problem behind the idea of Western Man. It isn't good enough just to be left as a miraculous adaptation of evolution with a life of its own to live, but all part of defining each and every bit of anything that comes to be on Planet Earth. That's why I had a hard time digging this book. He does conduct an apologia for his species at the end, and he did happen to discover ten completely unique species in his romp through New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and the Bismarck Islands. But unless you are a forceps and butterfly net wielding dweeb form the English Olde Schoole, I dunno if you will like it much or not. Even the presence of naked women rubbing against him clad in only corn-cob pipes can't shake Mr. Flannery's tweedy determination to conduct his most serious Polynesian mammalian research. Admirable, I suppose, if you are cut of the same cloth.
June 28, 2016
This is certainly an important book for someone who is interested in the mammals of the South Pacific and the natural history of the area. Tim Flannery is a Zoologist from Australia, who looked for signs of species of bats and rats that exist in the Pacific Islands of Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia. Flannery is taking previous knowledge of these mammals, specimens from museums (mostly from the nineteenth century) and tried to update this knowledge by going back to the islands where the mammals had been taken from. I particularly liked the chapters on Fiji and New Caledonia.
November 14, 2012
This book narrates the author's work exploring and documenting the small mammals on remote islands near New Guinea. He combines travel narrative with scientific explanation in a clear, entertaining way. This book is pretty light on the scientific information, but is written with humor and the natural descriptions of truly unique flora and fauna really kept my interest. I would recommend if for people who like both travel and popular science and who enjoy a combination of the two. I can't overstate the addition of humor to this book; I found myself laughing out loud at points.
Read
January 31, 2013Details Flannery's exploits as a zoologist in the Pacific Islands. He has many adventures searching for bats, rats and bandicoots that have only rarely been sighted. The tales he tells are interesting enough I suppose but I'm curious why they are being published now. These field studies were done in the 1980s and 90s and thus are 20 to 25 years old now. Are they still pertinent? Did Flannery see an easy and nice payer by dredging up his old field notes and making them into a book?
January 15, 2019
A absolutely enthralling read that enlightens as well as entertains. Among the Islands reads like a travel adventure and field notebook that will keep you engaged from the beginning to the end. This is an amazing book that through which you can feel the passion the author has for his research and the area of the world he studies.
July 28, 2020
An Australian mammologist (and all-star climate advocate) recounts travels early in his career to remote Pacific islands, identifying new species, meeting new cultures, exploring vast mountain jungles. Why not?
October 25, 2012
This really should have been a 5-star, but the writing was so odd and at times confusing that it quickly dropped from that level.
Flannery has, over the past two-three decades, studied mammals in many of the Pacific islands. By "mammals" he means rats and bats, some quite large and some quite small. That part is really fascinating, particularly when the different species are described (who knew that bats could have orange fur?). The problem comes when the descriptions are truncated, assuming that readers know what a wallaby looks like, among other species.
The travels and adventures part is also oddly truncated, with several trips elided; the timeline isn't always clear and sometimes there needs to be more clarity about who and when. It also doesn't help that this needs a firm editorial hand, cleaning up some of the convoluted sentences and pronouns. Here's an example - we all know that landmasses move, and that there are different reasons for them moving (plates shifting, volcanic action, etc.). But despite a long explanation about how species evolution can either lead to dwarfs or giants, there's nothing about timelines and when he then talks about islands that used to be joined "recently"...
This could, based on the writing, have been a 2 but the mammal hunting and adventures kept it from dropping that low.
ARC provided by publisher.
Flannery has, over the past two-three decades, studied mammals in many of the Pacific islands. By "mammals" he means rats and bats, some quite large and some quite small. That part is really fascinating, particularly when the different species are described (who knew that bats could have orange fur?). The problem comes when the descriptions are truncated, assuming that readers know what a wallaby looks like, among other species.
The travels and adventures part is also oddly truncated, with several trips elided; the timeline isn't always clear and sometimes there needs to be more clarity about who and when. It also doesn't help that this needs a firm editorial hand, cleaning up some of the convoluted sentences and pronouns. Here's an example - we all know that landmasses move, and that there are different reasons for them moving (plates shifting, volcanic action, etc.). But despite a long explanation about how species evolution can either lead to dwarfs or giants, there's nothing about timelines and when he then talks about islands that used to be joined "recently"...
This could, based on the writing, have been a 2 but the mammal hunting and adventures kept it from dropping that low.
ARC provided by publisher.
December 13, 2012
In Among the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific, Flannery recounts nearly 25 years of adventures in the South Pacific, beginning as a young biologist in 1987. The book is organized geographically, with sections devoted to travels in Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Isles, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia. Following in the footsteps of only a handful of biologists who have gone before him, Flannery travels to islands only accessible by ship, wades through piles of guano in search of new species of bats, encounters cultures with a history of cannibalism and head-hunting, and drink suspicious alcoholic beverages with government officials of small island states.
If you find that sort of lifestyle romantic, as I do, than this is an interesting read. Among the Islands is memoir, history, ethnography, and Darwinian-like study all in one. There’s reference to famed anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Roger Keesing, who shared with the world the unique cultures of the Trobriand Islands and the Kwaio peoples of the Solomon Island of Malaita. There’s in depth descriptions of monkey-faced bats and the lengths a scientist must go through in order to positively identify a new species.
Read the rest of my review here: http://beckyajohnson.net/2012/12/12/a...
If you find that sort of lifestyle romantic, as I do, than this is an interesting read. Among the Islands is memoir, history, ethnography, and Darwinian-like study all in one. There’s reference to famed anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Roger Keesing, who shared with the world the unique cultures of the Trobriand Islands and the Kwaio peoples of the Solomon Island of Malaita. There’s in depth descriptions of monkey-faced bats and the lengths a scientist must go through in order to positively identify a new species.
Read the rest of my review here: http://beckyajohnson.net/2012/12/12/a...
February 16, 2017
Flannery is an Australian biologist who spends much of his time counting and cataloging mammals, especially bats, on the islands near Australia. He worked on places like the Trobriand islands, and those off New Guinea, the Bismarks, New Ireland and New Britain, the Solomons, including Guadalcanal and down to Fiji and New Caledonia. Islands are interesting places for evolutionary studies, given their varied histories. Some were once joined to the mainland and may share speccies with them. Others are volcanic and can be populated by birds or bats or those animals that drift in from long distance. Humans brought pigs and chickens and also, unintentionally rats. It is a bit of a puzzle how all these forces interact. I enjoyed his descriptions of these jungle paradises, ie humid hell-holes, and the people there. Many have long histories of cannibalism and battles over colonization. Even so, I don't care that much about giant rats or flying foxes and so extensive narration about them was not that thrilling. Still and all, a pretty interesting and fast read.
March 15, 2016
I’ve been looking forward to reading Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers but Among the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific is my first book by the influential scientist. I thought it would be interesting to read since it’s an accounting of a series of expeditions he made at the beginning of his career. It was a particularly enjoyable read for me as it piggybacked on some other, recent reading and study I’ve done pertaining to the South Pacific. Flannery’s good sense of humor notwithstanding, some readers could find his discussion of so many exotic rats, birds and bats rather tedious. He more than held my interest with his descriptive writing but I have to admit I was sorely disappointed at the small collection of photographs he included with the book. They’re interesting but oddly underwhelming. I very much wished he could’ve included more photographs or illustrations of the species he identified or speculated about in his various field studies.
December 11, 2012
I have to confess to being somewhat ambivalent when I finished Among the Islands. Adventurous travelogue or work of science? Neither one really and therein lies the rub. I'm certain that that many of the experiences that he had while roaming the islands of Melanesia during the 1980's must have been hair-raising, but he makes them sound mundane. I'm also certain that he is an extremely bright and highly competant scientist, but I thing he tried a little too hard to dumb-down the science for we laymen. I REALLY would have liked a lot more pictures of some of the fantastic animals and colorful people that he talks about. I has to stop and Google way too many times - whodda thunk that he could get me that interested in a bunch of bats and rats.
All in all, a worthwhile read and I'll look forward to the new installment that he promises in the afterwrd.
All in all, a worthwhile read and I'll look forward to the new installment that he promises in the afterwrd.
May 1, 2013
This is a very interesting book about the search for previously unidentified island species in tropical islands of the South Pacific.Island species are especially interesting because they develop and evolve unique traits that are not found in related species located else where, thus islands are a great laboratory for studying speciation. This book recounts many of Flannery's expeditions over about a 20 year period of research and and exploration, encompassing both scientific and adventurous aspects of these expeditions. The downside is that the episodes seem to have been written up at different time periods and may be the for instance the presentations prepared for conference talks etc and consequently the chapters are quite uneven in many regards. Nevertheless, the book contains a wealth of information about the endemic species of these islands.
August 28, 2020
In this account of his youthful expeditions to Melanesia, Flannery reports assorted encounters with wild-spirited locals, hard treks through jungles, and numerous observations of previously undocumented bats or rats. He admits that he was just catching animals to catalog their existence, without much deeper understanding of their roles in the web of nature. At the time he lacked insight into the relations between natural and human history that would characterize his mature work. In both his personal encounters with the local people and his selection of historical tales, we have a young man's focus on the sorts of oddball events that would gross out listeners back home in Australia. It's far from Flannery's best writing, but the passion and curiosity of a young explorer are glorious anyhow.
January 20, 2014
This is an account of expeditions by Australian biologists to South Pacific islands to the east of New Guinea to collect rare mammals in the 1980s and the 1990s. Since the islands are isolated, the mammals are mostly bats, which could be carried by the wind, and rats, which could float on pieces of vegetation from island to island. Because of the dearth of mammals, the human inhabitants of the islands were often traditionally cannibals: where else were they going to get red meat? The islanders have been in contact with the Europeans and with Christianity for centuries, and the anthropological stories are not as interesting as those in Flannery's previous book about expeditions to the highlands of New Guinea.
December 17, 2017
I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been better prepared for the fact that the book is so heavily focused on bats and rats. The edition I read did not mention that the focus of the book is the mammaology of the SW Pacific on the dusk jacket or in the library catalog. I am afraid that my disinterest in bats and rats meant that a great deal of this book was only skimmed. However - the book did pique my interest in a few of the islands the author visited so the book was far from a waste of my time.
February 13, 2013
The Australian author of The Weather Makers returns with a travelogue/scientific expedition about his travels to Micronesia in search of rare flora and fauna. The hunt for species are embellished with historical back-story and context, complete with political intrigue, stalwart crew and cronies, cannibalistic rituals, and misguided missionaries...all in the name of conservation and celebration of the world's uniquely amazing wildlife.
February 1, 2013
I really enjoyed this book by Tim Flannery, an Australian mammologist, who tells of his visits to different Pacific islands near Papua New Guinea during the 1980s. He did surveys of the mammals on the these islands, most of which were bats and rats. The topic sounds grim, but he is a great storyteller and he brought out the cultures, landscapes, ecology and bats and rats of each island very well. An enjoyable read.
March 10, 2013
Tim Flannery, of the Australian Museum in Sydney, is a world-famous biologist and author who details his natural history tour of the Pacific islands in this book, searching for new species and attempting to ascertain whether species described by earlier naturalists are still living. It is disappointing, however, that the events depicted in the book took place nearly a quarter of a century or longer, but Flannery is always a great read.
April 1, 2013
Tim Flannery received a large grant to study the bats and rats on various islands of the Pacific.At the time he was a curator at an Australian museum and has since become an eminent environmentalist.Among the islands is a easy read with lots of interesting sidebars about the people of the various islands and also history and geographical info about various islands and their groupings in pacific chains. Very interesting!
June 30, 2016
This is a wonderful book if you enjoy travel in exotic places, landscapes or wildlife. Tim's collecting expeditions into the Melanesian islands around the 1980s capture a snapshot of the wildlife, the culture and the history of these islands. There are plenty of great stories included in the pages- my favourite was of him trying to ask in poor French for formaldehyde at a chemist shop in New Caledonia. There are plenty of laughs and a lot of ecology in this book.
April 20, 2019
Amazing adventures of a zoologist author while researching disappearing mammals on several remote Pacific island archipelagos. This book is one wild, and totally engrossing ride! Packed with fascinating descriptions of natural history, culture and tragic cases of development misguided, he wends his way among the isles of Vanuatu, the Solomons and New Caledonia with evocative descriptions of his search for new or lost species. A truly thrilling read!
Read
January 7, 2013Wcience writing with a light touch, Flannery, a zoologists, took me on a trip to the jungles of little-explored mountains and jungles of islands in the southwest Pacific in search of rare mammals. He makes chasing wombats and gathering bats in netting an adventure. Has written more than a dozen of science titles.
August 18, 2013
A naturalist on fields trips to the south Pacific. I learned a lot about island ecology as well as being thoroughly entertained. Though written by a scientist, he keeps human interest alive and does not heap on the scientific jargon and terminology.
July 6, 2020
Part travelogue, part natural history, part history lesson of remote islands of the South Pacific. This book shares the account of several expeditions to survey mammal species in these islands, while giving insight to the people and culture. A fun and quick read.
July 20, 2022
There is nothing overly remarkable about the writing - it is functional, factual and amusing. Like "Barbarian Days", the book provides a window to a different world - the south Pacific on the cusp of transformation. Many of the Melanesian islands visited by the author in the late 1980s were still relatively unaffected by contact with the outside. Indigenous cultures were relatively uncorrupted. Large swaths of natural habitats survived. And with them, fauna that had evolved over millions of years in unique island ecosystems held on tenuously as the influence of global economic, political and cultural forces increasingly pressed on them. Many of the creatures described in the book are probably gone now. The anthropocene has extended its reach to the most remote corners of the Earth. It all makes one wonder how long human dominion can hold sway.
November 30, 2023
This is generally a great book. I do question, however, Flannery's scientific methods: he seems to shoot first and ask questions later. (How many animals have gone extinct in the process?) Early in his career, Flannery was obsessed with bats and rats; perhaps he could exploit these types of animals in the Pacific islands to name creatures "new to science" after himself.
This book is great for folks who like to travel without leaving home. Flannery details many of his trips throughout remote Pacific islands in search of undocumented biodiversity in the face of physical danger and adverse, isolated living conditions.
Tags: travel, Pacific islands, bats, rats, shotgun science, islanders, biology, nature, wilderness, oceanic voyages
This book is great for folks who like to travel without leaving home. Flannery details many of his trips throughout remote Pacific islands in search of undocumented biodiversity in the face of physical danger and adverse, isolated living conditions.
Tags: travel, Pacific islands, bats, rats, shotgun science, islanders, biology, nature, wilderness, oceanic voyages
January 4, 2020
Hmmmm, underwhelming. There is no question that Flannery has had some amazing field research experiences in Melanesia, and he writes compellingly about them. However, I took issues with a few elements of this book: one was him naming species after his son when someone else (an earlier museum curator) had done all the work; a story about him getting malaria (how is it he was doing research in this part of the world without being on some sort of malaria prophylactic?); and some general explorer-mentality pomposity. [Note: It may be that I had less tolerance for stories about white dudes in the Pacific after having read a thorough history of French exploration/colonisation in the Pacific...]
August 17, 2022
This was one of those adventure/quest stories to discover the past. There was a travelogue feel to the book that I appreciated so it didn't sound too technical and boring. There has been some literature circulating on the oceanic islands particularly with regards to geologic history. This one was enjoyable, there were chapters I appreciated and chapters I skipped. It is hard to do a whole region justice but Flannery managed. I will be re-reading this in the near future.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews