Oceania Books

Ah the island life...a wonderful memoir of a more nostalgic time. Great read.

The Confessions Of A Beachcomber is the fascinating autobiography of a man who left a high-stress, dead-end career to live the simple live of a beachcomber on Dunk Island off the northern coast of Queensland, Australia. An avowed disciple of Thoreau, Banfield sough as simple a life as possible and maintained that life on his tropical island for twenty-five years. He involved himself in observing the flora, fauna, and aborigines of the island, and through the publication of The Confessions Of A Beachcomber became one of Australia's highly regarded literary figures. Now available to an American readership through this Dixon-Price edition, The Confessions Of A Beachcomber is especially recommended reading for any one who has ever felt like chucking so-called "modern life" and return to a simpler, more basic existence in harmony with the environment and all that nature has to offer the contemplative life.

Under inauspicious circumstances -- failing health -- Banfield arrives on Dunk island off of Australia's northeast coast. But as island lovers everywhere know, more often than not islands have a way of reintroducing vitality to the soul and regenerating failing health. Consider Robert Louis Stevenson! Such was the situation of Banfield when he arrived on Dunk Island.

Banfield's greatest skill within this book is his journalistic training and keen powers of observation. His descriptions of island birdlife, in particular, present detailed glimpses of behavior and how individual birds interact with the rest of the island. "With the aid of a good telescope and a compact pair of field glasses, birds may be studied and known far more pleasurably than as stark cabinet specimens," he writes. It's no surprise to find out later that Banfield eventually persuaded -- similar to Thoreau and Muir in America -- the Australian government to set aside Dunk Island as a protected wildlife area.

Banfield also turns his attentions to other island life, such as the coral reef and fishes surrounding the island, and including Aboriginals living on Dunk Island. While sounding condescending now, nearly a century later, his observations offer interesting insights into times past.

Banfield's book reminded me of a non-political, "Desert Solitaire"-esque Edward Abbey turning his attention to a tropical island, in that the location is both a background and a source of detailed information. I enjoyed reading about the behavior of all island life and appreciated Banfield's obvious patience and skills as an observor. Being an island aficionado myself, I felt like I was enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of some of my favorite places revisited.

Overall, an excellent book to add to your library, whether travel, island, bird, or environmentally related.

Under inauspicious circumstances -- failing health -- Banfield arrives on Dunk island off of Australia's northeast coast. But as island lovers everywhere know, more often than not islands have a way of reintroducing vitality to the soul and regenerating failing health. Consider Robert Louis Stevenson! Such was the situation of Banfield when he arrived on Dunk Island.

Banfield's greatest skill within this book is his journalistic training and keen powers of observation. His descriptions of island birdlife, in particular, present detailed glimpses of behavior and how individual birds interact with the rest of the island. "With the aid of a good telescope and a compact pair of field glasses, birds may be studied and known far more pleasurably than as stark cabinet specimens," he writes. It's no surprise to find out later that Banfield eventually persuaded -- similar to Thoreau and Muir in America -- the Australian government to set aside Dunk Island as a protected wildlife area.

Banfield also turns his attentions to other island life, such as the coral reef and fishes surrounding the island, and including Aboriginals living on Dunk Island. While sounding condescending now, nearly a century later, his observations offer interesting insights into times past.

Banfield's book reminded me of a non-political, "Desert Solitaire"-esque Edward Abbey turning his attention to a tropical island, in that the location is both a background and a source of detailed information. I enjoyed reading about the behavior of all island life and appreciated Banfield's obvious patience and skills as an observor. Being an island aficionado myself, I felt like I was enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of some of my favorite places revisited.

Overall, an excellent book to add to your library, whether travel, island, bird, or environmentally related.

A wonderful book to whet your appetite for exploration of The Barrier Reef. Television does a superb job with fleeting glimpses of moving images but this book allows you the opportunity to slowly absorb minute fractions of true beauty. Like a photo of a wave, you have the chance to stop time and look at nature as no human could do back through history before the invention of photography. As we explore space with the Hubble telescope we should remind ourselves of the beauty within our world before we step away like impatient teenagers to the next world.

This series of guides has a well-established format - so it is difficult to understand why they have made this particular guide so hard to follow.

The Great Barrier Reef is over 1,200 miles in length and, thankfully, the book does not claim to be a definitive guide. Refreshingly, therefore, it is exactly what is says it is - a "Guide to the Dive Sites of the Great Barrier Reef" and, generally speaking, it is a good one at that.

The book is divided into the accepted geographical sections of the Great Barrier Reef and commences each of these chapters with an informative introduction followed by brief details of a fair and representative selection of the best known dive sites.

So far so good, but then they go and "spoil the ship for a hapenth of tar." With very few exceptions, the photographs are generally very good and include some that are quite outstanding. They lose a "Star," however, for blatantly "touching" and "standing on" corals. No photograph showing such bad practises should have been included - and this book features more than one. Furthermore, diving inside the Yongala shipwreck contravenes the "Laws" of Queensland and I was saddened to find a photograph of a human skull is used to introduce Townsville on page 95.

In the English Language, we read from left to right whilst working our way from the top of the page to the bottom. It is, therefore, quite odd to find a book that sets out to do things in reverse order. This book commences in the south and works its way north. Altogether, over 150 dive sites are included - but each chapter commences with "Site No 1" whereas it would be far more useful had they been numbered consecutively from beginning to end. Most unusual of all, however, is the fact that every map shows these sites numbered from the bottom of the page up to the top. Eventually this really does become very awkward to follow. One might also be forgiven for thinking that it is all a very poor attempt to poke fun at Australia - you know, the country being upside down and all that... Maybe not, but another star lost.

In Summary; a rather good book, but in dire need of some serious rearranging. Nevertheless, all the information is there and, when compared to other books on the Great Barrier Reef, this is a good option.

NM

I thought this was a great book for a fresh diver to the reef. It has great pictures and covers a number of locations and dives sites. I found it useful to learn a few tidbits about the places I was seeing while on the boat between dives. Would recommend to anyone looking for a general book on the Great Barrier Reef.

This book does a nice job of detailing major dive sites throughout the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea. Dive sites are rated for both scuba and snorkeling. The book also has information on resorts, dive operators and facilities servicing the various dive sites. Information on various types of underwater life is also sprinkled in throughout the book. If you plan to dive the Barrier Reef or the Coral Sea this is an excellent guide to lay out your diving plans.

VERY informative. Perhaps too much info. At times I felt I was overloading. Better to have too much though than not enough. This book eliminates the need for any other.

There are some guidebooks which make a local cringe in embarassment! Not this one. It covers pretty much everything that a visitor to this city would want to see and do, and even leads people a little (but not TOO far) off the beaten track. There are suggestions for walks along some of the coastal paths, for example, and it includes places farther afield like captain Cook's Landing Place.

Like all the books in this series, it is lavishly illustrated and the maps are good. I use it for inspiration for weekend activities. It is a good general guidebook, which could be supplemented by more specialised volumes if you want to concentrate on one aspect of Sydney - eg guides to walks around the harbour, or activities specially for children, guides to national parks etc. but this book seems to cover just about everything at least in an introductory sense.

I didn't find this guide as useful nor as interesting as others in the series but I suspect it's because Sydney doesn't lend itself to guidebooks in the same way London or Rome do. I left Eyewitness at home, carried Frommer's Sydney guide, and winged it the rest of the way. Eyewitness has the best maps by far, though.

This is absolutely the best guide to Sydney. You must choose this above all other books! Complete, detailed informaion complete with excellent, useful pictures and commentary. A must buy!

In reviewing "Inventing 'Easter Island'" I found myself caught on the horns of a dilemma because, on the one hand (horn?) this is an interesting, scholarly work of profound implications that should inspire much discussion about what Easter Island was once, what it has become, and what it may evolve into one day. But within the book's erudite language and well-intentioned message there is an undeniable bias that punctures the equilibrium of its objectivity. This is evident from the very beginning when Haun, in her preface, justly takes to task a Canadian photographer who not too long ago committed unpardonable sins on the island by re-arranging rocks and disturbing potentially archaeologically significant sites in order to create "landscape art". This abomination was compounded by the fact that the photographer smuggled film off the island and some of his images were published in a Canadian magazine whose editors obviously have no dignity nor shame in glorifying how the photographer sneered at the "primitive" nature of the Easter Islanders who rightly objected to this desecration. And it is here that we begin to apprehend Haun's equation of what this Canadian did with what she calls the "Euro-American culture" that has by her reckoning re-invented the Easter Island cultural milieu and not necessarily in a positive way.

But is it entirely fair to equate what this photographer did with what early European explorers did? Are these two types of parties equally liable? Despite Haun's "resistance to the historical accounts", I say no. If the histories tell us anything, if social and cultural evolution has any validity, it is that for the most part we HAVE learned from the past, we ARE different. Some of us are, anyway. James Cook comes to mind. And in one particular way what this photographer did was worse than what many of the European explorers did BECAUSE HE KNEW BETTER; he had the product of centuries of knowledge about this island at his disposal and yet he admitted to coldly, deliberately ignoring both sensitivities and the law. We may thus rightfully ask if the first Europeans knew better, a question we do not have to ask of this Canadian photographer. Nor can we ignore the possibility that what we know of the past is the result of records made not always by the responsible parties but by their underlings or from faulty memories recalled years after the events -- and that this may reflect, but may not establish with certainty, a consequential discrimination, intended or otherwise, that was part of the inspiration for global exploration (and, yes, conquest) that sanctioned reprehensible acts without impunity.

In keeping with this, Haun tells us that "All texts are unstable constructions. All 'information' about the island is a version filtered through the perceptions and evaluations of the writers". Yet if this is accepted, then we would seem to have no choice but to interpret all accounts -- including Haun's -- as potentially suspect and therefore those that describe peaceful cooperation and those that involve exploitation and abuse may be no different from each other. But surely this doesn't always have to be so, any more than it is true when Haun cites Jorges de Cuchilleros who says that "we're complicit" in the evil actions of others by virtue of our recognition of them, even if they are culturally sanctioned. Just as recognition is not the same as participation, we should be capable of differentiating between those accounts which seek to describe and those which seek to justify.

I do not mean to exculpate those who committed bestial atrocities against the islanders but I believe I have sufficient historical perspective to know that some people are stupid and malignant and others are intelligent and benevolent and that we must not forget the context in which events occur in our interpretation of them. This is one reason I take exception to Haun referring to the "violence of renaming" of the island, because it was neither violent nor is it necessarily an injustice that "Easter Island" as a name would be imposed as part of the "invention" of this tiny triangular world lost in the Pacific. Let us not forget, as Haun herself points out, that the islanders themselves may not even have HAD a name for their own island and that the name that is so often used proudly today ("Rapa Nui") wasn't adopted until possibly a millennium after the first settlers arrived -- and even this name wasn't a creation of the islanders but was given to them by Tahitian sailors.

At the same time, it's not that anyone is requiring Haun to be "fair" or "balanced" in expressing her opinions. She's entitled to them and there is no shortage of thought behind them. But her conclusions subsequently inspired MY reactive opinion that it is not the scientist's task to assign culpability or to exonerate when explaining behavior and its outcomes. Is it likely that the Easter Islanders contributed to their demise? Yes. This is what humans do. Is it likely that the Easter Islanders were SOLELY responsible? Hardly. There are a great many factors in a whole constellation of factors that may have contributed to the island's cultural and environmental collapse -- and so it is not always necessary to lay the blame entirely at anyone's feet or interpret anyone's actions in ethical terms at all. But it is undeniable that at least two camps have developed, one led largely by Jared Diamond (borrowing heavily but probably interpreting erroneously the intentions of Paul Bahn & John Flenley, and perhaps John Dransfield) and another led by a diverse group including Terry Hunt & Carl Lipo, Benny Peiser, and Paul Rainbird (to name a few) who seem desirous of not only disproving Diamond, Bahn & Flenley, and Dransfield but in "freeing" the Easter Islanders from the "guilt" of knowing they were chopping down the last tree but did it anyway. I do not believe that anyone of sensitivity or intelligence is suggesting the islanders were "stupid" in their actions but then, having said this, I am forced to ask if we modern humans should be seen as stupid for what we are doing to our planet and I am thus constrained to wonder why we are may be employing a double standard. Unless it functions in the same way where we must distinguish between what the Canadian photographer did and what the "Euro-Americans" did on the island we call Easter.

Into this roiling cauldron of ideas Haun has thrown herself with verve. Her prose is excellent, her research evidently thorough and directed. Thus I appreciate the sophistication with which Haun's book is written and I can't deny her passion even if it occasionally interferes with her objectivity. It seems strange, for example, that she criticizes Hodges's artistic interpretations of the island for "erasing the Rapanui from the scene of their own cultural production" (which is by Haun's own admission inaccurate since there ARE islanders present in the engravings and paintings) and further chastises him for taking liberties with the weather as it's depicted in one of his most famous paintings because it's not historically accurate "as reported in the journals" -- journals that she might have us question as to their veracity. I'd say it's dangerous enough to question the creative license an artist might employ even when you KNOW the artist's intentions -- but there is no shortage of irony in the fact that Haun uses this famous painting on the cover of her own book. Or maybe this is to make a point?

And if it is irony that one should observe in "Inventing 'Easter Island'", there is no better example than the title itself, for the phrase is particularly apt not just because of its implications within this book's message but because of the whole context of ideas it conjures, neatly in keeping with what Jacquetta Hawkes once said about another place where the stonework of an ancient culture has dazzled and perplexed us for centuries: "Every generation gets the Stonehenge it deserves". The same can, I think, be said about Easter Island. When the islanders weren't "thieves" or "savages" or possibly cannibals they were fodder for slavery or, sadly, unwilling vectors for disease. Today the Easter Islanders seem to be suffering from an identity crisis brought on by immigrants from Chile or ideas from Hollywood, and even they cannot agree on whether they should follow in the footsteps of Tikopia or Las Vegas. Haun cites the late Clemente Hereveri as having said science is in conflict with the ethnic world while at the same time he asked that the indigenous Rapanui be able to preserve their past by the transmission of knowledge -- and yet this is one of the things science does. Are these conflicts really the result of outside influence with ulterior motives or a misunderstanding of what science really represents -- an aspect of the Human Condition ever seeking to define itself out of increasing necessity or ravenous curiosity?

In point of fact, the "invention" that Haun would very nearly have us believe as a pejorative phenomenon is really a function of the wonderful resourcefulness of the Easter Islanders, for they have weathered (literally and figuratively) a storm of human and environmental disasters and have not only survived but repeatedly re-invented themselves in order to endure. "Invention" here is the glory of the Easter Islanders. If there is any "invention" it is not an imposition from without but a profound evolution from within.

In the end, beyond the factual information, the bias still cannot be ignored but this does not make the book flawed, nor do I discourage anyone from buying or reading it. But make no mistake: If you place yourself in the camp that bleeds for the Easter Islanders, ancient or modern, this book preaches to the choir. If you place yourself in the camp that wants to differentiate between the past and the present and believe that there is a difference in how these are not only interpreted but manifested even today (after all, the Rapanui, as Haun says, have a "right to define their past as well as their future on their own terms"), what you may get out of this book becomes a matter of being forced to question whether the same bias the author complains about is inherent because of the interpretation she brings to the discussion or because of objective effects in the real world potentially open to our inspection and thinking. Regardless of which camp the politics of this book inspires one to adhere to, it can justly be said that it continues to support an important dialogue that may eventually produce a better understanding (or perhaps a better "invention" of Easter Island.

* * *

[Note: The writer of this review is a member of the Board of Directors of the Easter Island Foundtaion and the author of the "Complete Guide to Easter Island".]

Accessible scholarship! This book explores the paradox of a small island that is well known to the world for not being well known. Haun illuminates the strange public awareness of Easter Island through a comfortably esoteric lens of postcolonial theory and cultural analysis. In particular she explores the texts and images of the first four European voyages to the island, all in the eighteenth century and conveniently representing four distinctly different perspectives, namely the Dutch, the Spanish, the British, and the French. It also has a strong educational component and cultural revelance. Haun places the entire Easter Island story within a framework that makes it a model for teaching and understanding the European Imperial project, from its origins to the present residual effects. This is a well-conceived and beautifully written work of intellectual inquiry for the specialist in a number of academic fields and for the informed general reader who might also be reading academic popularizers ranging from Jared Diamond to Thor Heyerdahl, about both of whom Haun offers intriguing critical commentary.

I really liked this book. It gave me insights into the way so much of
the way we have been taught to view the world has been shaped not by
what we see, but by what we have been taught to believe about what we
see. It is fascinating to read how European explorers saw the island
in the eighteenth century and how the islanders reacted to meeting
strangers. Even more thought provoking is the way contemporary writers
manipulate past information to build cases that will support whatever
agenda they are promoting today, like Jared Diamond. All in all this
book really got me thinking about how I view the world.

"Inventing Easter Island" is a work of extraordinary scholarship that explores, in depth, the consequences of the earliest European encounters with Easter Island and the ways in which reports of these and later encounters have played such an important role in "inventing Easter Island" as it exists in Western culture.

Anyone who seeks more than a superficial understanding of the history of Easter Island and of the ways in which Easter Island and its iconic statues have become part of popular culture should read this book.

Bringing together a wealth of historical information from widely scattered sources, in addition to contemporary depictions, Beverly Haun has produced a magisterial volume whose value to scholars will surely outlast that of the less meticulous and more sensationalist attempts to explain the history of Easter Island that have engaged the public's imagination in recent years.

[Note: The author of this review is a past member of the Board of the Easter Island Foundation. Her book, "Early Visitors to Easter Island 1864-1877" provides complete translations from the French of the reports of Eugene Eyraud, Hippolyte Roussel, Pierre Loti and Alphonse Pinart. Her translation of Chauvet's "Easter Island and Its Mysteries" is available, at no charge, on line [...] ]

Appears to be well written, easy to use.

Proof will be when I get to Australia next month.

I am planning on backpacking for an extended amount of time in Australia. This guide is invaluable in planning my trip. I love the series - it is perfect for a budget traveller like me. I don't know yet how accurate the info is, as I have yet to go, but the book itself is well written and organized.

i just recently took a 9 month trip to australia and this guide definately turned out to be my bible. i liked the layout of the book and would choose lets go over lonely planet in a heartbeat. i found lets go has more maps with better detail. in my opinion it fits the same amount of info in a lighter and more flexible binding book.

This was my 2nd time using Let's Go guides, my 1st being Let's Go Japan. I prefer them to the Lonely Planet guidebooks in general. They seem to have a less intoxicated following. As with my NZ review, I wish that the authors would've stressed the quarantine & customs issues regarding everything including food.

The book had all the basic info. you need for hiking in New Zealand. It's easy to read with a couple of nice pictures. Enjoy!

By far the best guide available about tramping opportunities in NZ. The track guides are pretty accurate and provide a good overview of what to expect.

This edition is far better than the previous editions. It's new organization and additional information sections are a marked improvement. A new section on Flora and Fauna gives a highlight of any New Zealand tramp. This book acts as an excellent reference book while tramping. Of course, if the book contained every piece of required information, (i.e. highly detailed maps and every step of the way instructions) it would require 1000's of pages. The authors surmount that difficulty by including instructions on how to obtain additional necessary information. The book is perfect for those that are looking into or planning a backpacking trek to New Zealand.

This is a great book for planning a tramping trip to New Zealand, although it's a bit too much to carry while actually hiking. The book contains good references and maps to the most popular tracks, and some of the lesser known tracks. If your tight on cash, I recommend going to the visitor centers in New Zealand and picking up the DOC pamphlets they supply. D.O.C. has detailed pamphlets on pretty much every track in New Zealand and they only charge about 50 cents (US) for each one. But if you want to plan a trip from home, this is the book to get, it's far easier to understand than the other New Zealand tramping books, and gives good information on what you need to bring. It also gives good info on the New Zealand back country hut system. Buy a hut pass, they're only 35 bucks (US) for a year. It even supplies some decent fly fishing tips for the rivers that border some of the tracks. But be warned that almost every other tourist hiker in New Zealand also has this book, so if you really want to get away from people, you'll have to do some bushwacking.

I have been to his galleries in Las Vegas many times, just to get lost in his amazing work. He is a very talented person. This book would be a great addition to any photographic collection. I continue to look at it when I need inspiration/motivation to get up at 2am to go on a sunrise shoot.

After reading the other reviews I decided to purchase this book. It is very disappointing. It is a rather small book and to be honest I have seen much better pictures on calendars. The book is over rated by the other 2 reviewers.

I will say that Amazon delivered promptly as usual even before the estimated time. I have never been disappointed in Amazon's service and delivery.

I saw this book at a Peter Lik gallery in Maui but it was the gallery's copy. I wanted to buy one but they told me that the book was sold out and I could buy one of the employee's personal copies which was used for $150. So I was very happy when I found it on Amazon for such an amazing price. It came wrapped in plastic so I bought 2 copies; one to view and another to keep since it might be worth something later on since it won't be reprinted. At least that's what they told me at the gallery. The book is beautiful and captures Maui at its best. It makes a great gift for friends and family too.

The book arrived right on time and it was great. The pictures were like nothing I have ever seen before. I recommend the book and Peter Lik to anyone.

The book is an excellent overview of the Voyager missions sent to explore the largest planets of our solar system: Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. The book gives a complete account of the spacecrafts' respective journeys and their discoveries but most important the author also brings up-to-date information that has been gathered since the Voyagers executed their fly-bys of those distant moons (information gathered via ground-based telescopes, Hubble and other spacecraft like Galileo). Although the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting planet Saturn will certainly add more information about the planet and its moons than the book contains, this work will remain as a true reference for a long time.
The books is solid account of what we know of our solar system.

The Voyager 1 & 2 missions launched in 1977 revolutionised our knowledge of the outer solar system. This book summarises the missions, how they were planned and executed, what when wrong and what worked better than expected.

Most of all it explains what we learnt about the planets that we never knew before. Except for Galileo's recent sojourn at Jupiter, and Cassini's introduction to Saturn, the Voyagers have provided practically all our knowledge of the giant planets of the outer Solar System and their moons. What the Voyagers provided just cannot be measured from Earth based telescopes, even telescopes like the HST in Earth orbit. There is just no substitute for getting in close with an array of instruments.

The book starts with a bit of history about mankind's discovery of the nature of the solar system with a specially good section on the discovery of the new planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The historical encounters of John Adams (who was one of two who predicted the position of the as yet undiscovered Neptune) with George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who couldn't be bothered looking, were particularly of interest.

The exploration program was initially planned as a 'Grand Tour' with two launches to Jupiter, Saturn then Pluto followed by two launches to Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. However funding these missions was competing with the development of the Space Shuttle, and the inevitable happened, budget cuts. Even with the reduction in funds, the opportunity could still not be missed, as the optimal alignment of the planets for taking advantage of such a progressive gravitational slingshot would not reoccur until the twenty second century, the 'chance of three lifetimes' for sure. A reduced budget mission was eventually given approval.

Of surprise to this reader was that the final Voyager missions (the name was not chosen until shortly before launch) were initially planned as Jupiter plus Saturn missions only, due of course to funding restrictions. The final configuration of the space craft was very different from those of the earlier 'Grand Tour' plans which had included the drop off of a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter, finally executed by Galileo decades later. The final Voyagers were closely related to the successful Mariner series.

While some interesting background detail is provided on the spacecraft themselves, their power, computer and instrumentation systems, and the intensity of the mission planning debates at the time of each encounter, the planets of course are the stars of the book. Evans & Harland spend over 50 pages discussing the discoveries at Jupiter, 40 pages on Saturn and its rings, and almost 30 pages each on Uranus and Neptune and their unusual collection of moons.

With Jupiter, both the Voyager's discoveries and the more recent additions to our knowledge from Galileo are covered. Cassini of course is in the process of re-writing the history of our knowledge of Saturn and its environs. But don't let that disturb you. Cassini will take at least four years to make its discoveries, and this book is such a thoroughly good read, you should read it now. Highly recommended.

In the last decade Springer-Praxis has published a significant number of new titles on the history of space exploration. Some are better than others, of course, and unfortunately this is not one of the more notable entries in the series. Written for the non-specialist, "NASA's Voyager Missions" offers a general introduction to what turned out to be a stunning "grand tour" of the outer gas giants of the solar system in the latter 1970s and 1980s. The basics of the story are present including the mission's origins in the 1960s, its launch in 1977, encounters with the outer planets, and the scientific windfall that resulted from the mission. This work also discusses the individuals who devoted their entire working lives to them, from the planetary work of the 1970s and 1980s to the recent Voyager Interstellar Mission.

These missions, launched from Kennedy Space Center in 1977 were intended only to image Jupiter and Saturn as they flew by, essentially a windshield tour. As the mission progressed, with the successful achievement of all its early objectives, additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible--and irresistible--to mission scientists. Eventually, between them, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 explored all the giant outer planets, 48 of their moons, and the unique systems of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess. The two Voyagers took well over 100,000 images of the outer planets, rings, and satellites, as well as millions of magnetic, chemical spectra, and radiation measurements. Without question, they returned information to Earth that revolutionized the science of planetary astronomy.

This work is suited for introductory history and science classes, but it is too unsophisticated for the serious student. It leaves unanswered a myriad of questions, and fails to explore issues of interest to historians. Unfortunately, the full history of this mission still awaits its historian. There are some other good works on the subject but those also fail to tell the story fully. Among those other books are Henry C. Dethloff and Ronald A. Schorn, "Voyager's Grand Tour: To the Outer Planets and Beyond" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003); Robert S. Kraemer, "Beyond the Moon: Golden Age of Planetary Exploration 1971-1978" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); and David W. Swift, "Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour" (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997). These other works should be read along with "NASA's Voyager Missions" to gain a more rounded portrait of the Voyagers missions and their accomplishments.

This book, as was to be expected from a volume in the excellent Springer-Praxis series in astronomy and space sciences, is absolute quality. Although I haven't read its American `competitor' Voyager's Grand Tour by Henry C. Dethloff, I cannot believe that it could be done better than this. Especially if you're interested in the scientific aspects (planetary science, that is) of the Voyager missions, you won't be disappointed. It's all very well covered, extensively, with lots of interesting details and totally up-to-date (Galileo results are included in the discussions and there's a preview of the Cassini and JIMO (to Jupiter's moons) missions). The author may not be a planetary scientist himself, he is definitely an excellent science writer, offering an approach that's technical and detailed (and `problem-conscious') enough to satisfy even professional astronomers while he's writing in such a way so as to convey the sheer excitement of solar system exploration in every sentence. Very readable also, nowhere dry or dull.
The book is more heavily focused on the scientific results of the voyager missions than it is on the technical, engineering parts of it, but that is really not a problem. Most of the on-board instrumentation of the Voyager probes is explained well enough. The book has a lot of stunning black-and-white photographs and many illustrations and diagrams, and it even features a middle section with 13 colour plates. There's a bibliography and also a huge list of useful internet resources. All in all a great book. Very, very much recommended! Don't let yourself be scared off by its considerable price. It's worth every penny.

If only there could be more of these books, finally a book that you can read and that gives honest comments.

I found this guide to be a great introduction to palau and useful in my wanderings around the islands. Too bad the author is a redneck old guy without much of an interest in marine exploits, or he would have expanded much better on the best side of Palau, which is scuba diving. Also the maps are confusing as the keys to places are kind of mixed-up in the black and white reproductions. But I would nevertheless recommend the book to anyone going to Palau as a very good reference.

Very helpful in planning our trip. The book even gave details on the outer island besides the main island of Koror. Books on Palau do not exist if you want info buy this book

Having been to Palau,(and being fortunate enough to be married to a Palauan), I can say this little guidebook is excellent. The book is very accurate and I can tell the author took the time to visit all the inhabited islands in this beautiful archipelago; not many tourists will visit Anguar or Kayangel but those visits are worth the effort. The author aalso mingled with the locals which is also a very good thing to do if you want to see the really good stuff.
I plan to retire to Palau and this little book made me homesick, in a way. Palau is remote, difficult and expensive to get to. It is also a wild and unspoiled Eden and if you are into Botany, Zoology and the Natural Sciences in general, then Palau is a dream come true.

This book is so rad. The pictures are awesome. It's just a great book

Good pictures, solid review of breaks. An excellent complement to the Surf Report.

I spent 4 months driving from west Oz to northern New South Wales, and the coastline was pretty well covered. But not so much that you can't find your own spots not listed. A great guide for the first time visitor.

Being an Aussie and wanting to get out there amonst it all, this book says it all. Being one of five kids that all surf in different areas and using different modes of transport on the water this book has it all for all of us and this book is what they will all get for chrissy this year!!