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Clipperton: A History of the Island the World Forgot
Book by Skaggs, Jimmy M.
318 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 25, 2019
A perfect balance between exhaustive and enthralling.
July 22, 2022
Well that was a remarkable book about a place remarkable for its unimportantness.
Clipperton Island is a tiny little atoll 600 miles off the shore of Acapulco where no one lives. It's had a few mildly interesting events in its history but it is basically irrelevant.
The awesome thing about this book is Skaggs chases down *every single story* there is to tell, every visit and attempt at living there. Every failed landing attempt, every disastrous two week stay. All meticulously researched with frankly twice the amount of detail I really needed. It amounts to a series of follies and ridiculous tedium that somehow adds up to a fairly fascinating narrative about a largely uninteresting island.
The most interesting story is the horrible tale of the "King of Clipperton". Also surprising was Franklin D. Roosevelt's personal interest in claiming the island as an American airbase and the stories of him personally commandeering Navy ships for fishing trips to visit his favorite Mexican/French useless atoll. What a weird story!
Remarkable reading for the depth research. But I can only recommend the book if for some reason you have a personal interest in Clipperton itself, naval logistics on atolls, or obscure bits of French and Mexican foreign relations.
Clipperton Island is a tiny little atoll 600 miles off the shore of Acapulco where no one lives. It's had a few mildly interesting events in its history but it is basically irrelevant.
The awesome thing about this book is Skaggs chases down *every single story* there is to tell, every visit and attempt at living there. Every failed landing attempt, every disastrous two week stay. All meticulously researched with frankly twice the amount of detail I really needed. It amounts to a series of follies and ridiculous tedium that somehow adds up to a fairly fascinating narrative about a largely uninteresting island.
The most interesting story is the horrible tale of the "King of Clipperton". Also surprising was Franklin D. Roosevelt's personal interest in claiming the island as an American airbase and the stories of him personally commandeering Navy ships for fishing trips to visit his favorite Mexican/French useless atoll. What a weird story!
Remarkable reading for the depth research. But I can only recommend the book if for some reason you have a personal interest in Clipperton itself, naval logistics on atolls, or obscure bits of French and Mexican foreign relations.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews