Oceania Books

This detailed, well-organized reference provides a guide to all the countries of the world from the perspective of the South. Most of the contributors are from the developing world, and the work is coordinated by the Instituto del Tercer Mundo in Uruguay. Don't be fooled by your gut reaction that a book can't be readable and rigorous unless it's published in New York, however. This is one of the better geopolitical reference sources in print by any standard. The country profiles provide unparalleled historical summaries of developing nations, along with truly relevant statistics. It also provides analyses of current global issues, such as food, health, education, poverty, habitat and human welfare.

A beautiful book, showing superb examples of belts from all over the world. This book is one, of a series of six, detailing ethnic jewelry from around the world. All of the pieces shown come from the collection of a Belgian couple, who have been collecting since the 1950s. The book contains magnificent, color photos, which show items at actual size, in many cases. My only criticism of the book, concerns the examples of Native American jewelry from the Southwestern United States. None of the Southwestern items were made by known artists, nor are the items of outstanding quality or design. The other books in the series share this same shortcoming.

Author Clinton Frederick writes about his father who was killed in WWII just four months after his own birth. In this sentimental and emotionally touching book "World War II: A Legacy of Letters - One Soldier's Journey" he takes readers on a journey of discovery about not only his father but about the war, the era and the attitudes of that time and place in our history. He not only shares long lost letters that his father wrote, but he adds information that he researched about his dad's unit and what was going on in the war around the time of those letters home.

The author remembered that his father had old war souvenirs in the attic at his childhood home and in his adult years he comes back to rediscover them. He also finds a truck load of old letters that his father wrote home. He took this treasure trove of information and makes this one very endearing voyage of emotions. He finally gets a good look at understanding his dad and learns more about him then he ever knew. In the process of putting the book together he finds members of his dad's old unit and even finds out about his parent's best man at their wedding. He uses the letters, lots of conversations along with hours of researched data from government files, lots of help from strangers and family to compile lots of information about what his dad did in the war. It is a moving reading experience and one that will explore many parts of your own heart and soul.

Frederick does a masterful and skillful job of placing the letters into the flow of the book along with recaps of events and comments. The end deals with the death notices and the funeral of his father. It all works to paint this portrait of the real man his father was. This son truly honors his father's history and delivers a fine tribute to him. I believe that the author finally make all those personal emotional connections between himself and his father as well. I think there was healing taking place just through the writing of the book.

The book has lots of facts, old photos, and information related to his father's war experiences; a great personal look at World War II. The author does a professional job of the writing and putting this book all together. It is well worth buying and reading it. Readers will find it fascinating and emotionally riveting at times. I enjoyed it very much.

I read this book right before a trip to Australia, finished on the first leg of the flight. The whole time traveling around the country (great place by the way), I found myself seeing and hearing things right off the pages. My wife got so tired of listening to my chuckle and me trying to explain what was so funny that she read it on a train trip we did in our second week of the trip. If you've got a trip to Oz in your future, get the usual travel guides but also get this book.

I've read this book three times and I'm sure I will read it many more. Bill's insightful commentary on his travels through Australia is fascinating. His prose is easy to read, making this a great bathroom or late night reader.

You will learn facts about Australia you never knew all the while laughing out loud at Bill's perspective on his experiences. You will feel like the author brought you along for the journey!

I ran into this audio book on a used mp3 player I bought,,hmm hmm on ebay. Rather than just delete everything, I thought should check things out. I don't get time to read books, though I would like to. I have audio books, but never have time to listen to them either. One title was Bill Bryson. Never heard of him, but I had a few hours to listen to my mp3 payer. So I may as well check out the books that were on there. The author had kind of a British accent. I don't like british accents that much. They annoy me., alot. (crippes, now im writting like him))) After a short listen to this book not even starting from the beginning of the book, I could not put this down. The intelligents and style of writting/speaking was informitive, clear and humorous along with the vivid immagination of views of what he was talking about. Yes, several laughs out loud with the ear-bud mp3 player headphones on. I recommend this to anyone who appriciates some history,humor,life and a chance to get away from it all. If you like travel or just basic human behavior, you should love it. I would love for my family to hear this book.

I'm sure there are tons of reviews like mine. Anyways: I loved that book. It's very funny and loaded with information. Since I'm planning to go to Australia in December, I'm glad for all the tips and hints the book comes with. However, as always coming from Bill Bryson, it's a great read.

I read Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything" and I did enjoy the book. However when reading "In a Sunburned Country" I have to say I was disappointed at the overall tone of the book.

While fans of Bryson may think he is humorous, most of his humor falls flat and somewhat tasteless especially in his cavalier treatment of the beloved game of Cricket. Please, if you don't understand cricket and never grew up with it, you have no clue what you are talking about, and the attempted humor was pathetic.

Another thing I find mildly offputting is that he mentions in the beginning of the book that it feels great to land in Australia where everything seems similar to America and how civilized it is, and that people look like you. Is he saying that the people are white? So if I was not a white person I should feel uncomfortable? There are many other countries not too far from Australia where the people may not look like Bryson, but that does not mean one can't feel comfortable and feel that people of those countries are friendly.

It also appears that all Bill Bryson and his traveling buddy want to do is find bars and drink excessively. He does not really explore the culture of Australia in a deeper sense, it reminds me more of two college kids driving through another country.

Overall the book gave me a decent idea of Australia, but now I am not sure how accurate it is.

I enjoyed the book. Now it's obvious where lots of information came from that appears in later Titanic books.

Walter Lord did his homework on the Titanic's fateful night in this unforgettable and memorable book. He did not need to create fiction or suggest anything to the contrary. In fact, he writes about it from the survivor's perspectives. Despite the horrors, what shocked me was the situation in the lifeboats in the aftermath of shell-shocked people who have watched their loved ones, mostly their husbands, go down with the ship. I don't know why California didn't seek to assist them or inquire about the distress signals. We'll never know what makes people ignore others in time of great distress. When the Carpathia arrived to pick up the survivors, they are shocked by the news that Titanic is gone and they are the only ones to tell a shocking story of so many people's last moments on earth. Forget James Cameron's movie, this book is real and faithful to those fifteen hundred men, women, and children who perished as it is to the survivors who never recovered fully. Because of the Titanic disaster, every ship since was required by international shipping law to have enough lifeboats for everybody on ship and supplies during the worst of disasters. The last pages of the book are the names of those who died and survived. Where they embarked for their final destination to New York City but most of them would never make it there. I remember survivor Eva Hart who lost her father in the disaster that it was all about arrogance. The ship had to be fast, unsinkable, and yet the disaster was unthinkable. She said her mother, Miriam Hart, lashed back with a comment that has stuck with me for years that when saying the ship is unsinkable is like tempting fate to occur. Mrs. Hart, Eva's Mother, spent her nights awak and days asleep as if a premonition of this ship never making New York City. This story was not included in this book but Walter Lord does his best and it's remarkable that he prefers facts to rumors or gossip. It has taken me years to read this book maybe because of all those who perished still resonate with the Titanic's ultimate fate. The Titanic was the ultimate ship and none has ever come close in the ship's genius, magnificience, style, and sophistication. The third class passengers never enjoyed it. The second and first class passengers must have felt like they were in heaven with first class service catered to their needs and fancies. Rest in Peace, Titanic, and all those who have sailed with you on that fateful trip. You will always be in my heart as the ship of dreams and destiny.

At 11:40 p.m. on the night of April 14, 1912, the White Star liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg in the north Atlantic. Less than three hours later, the ship known to the world as "unsinkable" was on her way to the bottom of the sea.

The unexpectedness of the event, along with the shocking number of lives lost (more than 1500 by most estimates) and the many stories of carelessness and incompetence contributing to the disaster, cemented the Titanic into the collective consciousness of Western culture. Countless articles, exhibits, books, and movies (the most famous, released in 1997, grossed over $1.8 billion in worldwide revenue) have documented and fictionalized various aspects of the tragedy. Even nearly a hundred years later, it would be difficult to find someone who had never heard of the Titanic.

In 1955, while many of the survivors of the Titanic's first and only voyage were still alive--and before the journalistic novel became fashionable as a genre--Walter Lord researched and wrote a minute-by-minute account of what happened during the ship's final night. Called A Night to Remember, Lord's account provides an interesting blend of minute details and broad sweeping overviews in its description of what happened onboard the ship.

The book is easy to read and goes very quickly. Lord gives his prose a very journalistic feel, with short sentences and easy language. Entertaining is hardly the right word to use for a description of an event that claimed so many lives, but compelling describes the account pretty well. Lord puts readers right on the deck of the doomed ship, and then right into the lifeboats and, later, into the courtrooms and newspaper editors' offices during the aftermath of the sinking.

Chapters are entitled with snippets of the dialog that occurs within each. Examples include "There's Talk of an Iceberg, Ma'am," "God Himself Could Not Sink This Ship," "There Is Your Beautiful Nightdress Gone," and, perhaps most poignant, "Go Away--We Have Just Seen Our Husbands Drown."

The book's primary weakness is that in trying to include glimpses of so many people's experiences, Lord was mostly unable to go into much depth with any of the individual characters. Unlike later books in this genre--such as Blackhawk Down or The Perfect Storm, both of which describe in detail the experiences of a relatively small number of people during catastrophic events--A Night to Remember has to catalogue the experiences of over 2,000 individuals. Lord manages to include a lot of names, but without any background or detail, they quickly become meaningless.

Though the scope of the book (probably necessarily) minimizes the amount of emotion connected with the tragedy, there are a few emotive moments when the reader realizes along with a child or a wife that a beloved husband or father will not be coming on a lifeboat. Depictions of the wireless operator sleeping onboard the nearby Californian, panicky passengers in lifeboats violently refusing to assist drowning swimmers, and determined high-society men donning formal evening dress to "go down like gentlemen" evoke flashes of emotion as well.

Overall, the book is worth reading for its historically accurate picture of what actually happened on that cold April night. Though it's no literary masterpiece, it is informative and interesting, particularly for anyone who has seen James Cameron's movie or read Clive Cussler's book and would like to know the real story. The book contains nothing objectionable (except for the event itself), and is suitable for any reader. I recommend it without reservation.

I just re-read Night to Remember for the first time in many years, and was reminded why it got me hooked on Titanic lore. It is truly the definitive book on Titanic and one of the best works of narrative history ever written. Its pacing, style, and most importantly its factual underpinning make it a timeless classic,

Two things set A Night to Remember apart from every other book and film on the subject of the Titanic:

First, with the exception of the ship breaking up as it sank (and the official record, with its conflicting testimony, shows it could have been written either way in 1955) and the use of the first SOS (which Lord corrected in later editions), there is not a single fact in the book that has ever been proven wrong. And, oh, how supporters of Capt. Lord of the Californian have tried.

Second, this is not a book about the sinking of the Titanic so much as it is a book about the PEOPLE involved in the event of the sinking. Take just the first sentence of the first chapter: "High in the crow's-nest of the new White Star Liner Titanic, Lookout Frederick Fleet peered into the dazzling night." Remember back to your English grammar classes and you will note that the subject of this sentence is a person, not a ship. So it is throughout the rest of the book. As readers, are we not more compelled by people rather than objects? Of course we are.

And as Walter Lord reminds us from the first that this is a story about people, so does he employ the expertise of a reporter and the flair of a novelist. The reporter . . . Who? Frederick Fleet. What? He peered. When? Night. Where? The Titanic's crow's-nest. Why? He was a Lookout. But by dressing up these facts with a few choice words and phrases ("High up", "new", "dazzling"), Lord draws us in dramatically.

Over the years, science and technology have given us greater insight into the building, operation, and physical break-up of the Titanic. But no one has ever come close to Walter Lord in recreating and relating the events of the night of April 14 - 15, 1912.

Melina Marchetta is Australian. According to the backflap copy for this book, she lives in Sydney where she teaches English at an all-boys high school. After the 1992 debut of her first novel Marchetta found herself in an interesting position. Looking for Alibrandi won every major literary award for young adult literature in Australia so that Marchetta subsequently had to teach her own book to her students. All told, not a bad problem to have.

Ten years later Saving Francesca came out and also garnered a lot of praise and awards (as well as regularly being in my Top Five). In short, Melina Marchetta is a pretty big deal. I enjoy her books because they feel like her characters are living lives that I might have had were things different.

Apparently, and I'm embarassed to say I only found this out yesterday, Looking for Alibrandi was also adapted into a movie in Australia in 2000 with Marchetta writing the screenplay. I wish I could find the DVD.

Set in Australia, this novel deals with a sub-community that I didn't even know Australia had: Italians. Narrator, Josie, comes from an Italian family that immigrated to Australia. At a Catholic school she doesn't like, surrounded by people who don't understand the Italian part of her culture, seventeen-year-old Josie feels adrift.

Josie has a lot of women in her life. She lives with her mother and (much to her frustration) spends afternoons with her grandmother until her mom can pick her up. Josie's father isn't a part of the picture. He never has been. And what I like about this novel, is that it isn't a big deal-it's just life. No complex explanation, no pang of longing for the father she never met, he's just no around.

Or is he?

Things get more complicated for Josie and her mom when Josie's long-absent father suddenly reappears. After living without him for so long, Josie isn't sure he's worth her time now. In this thread of the novel, Marchetta does an excellent job exploring how Josie can acquaint herself with one of the people she should know better than anyone else.

Amidst this family confusion, Josie finds herself caught between two very different young men. Josie has always been attracted to John Barton, and with good reason. His life seems to have been handed to him on a silver platter. From a rich family, bound for law school, and good-looking, John seems to have everything going for him. Still, as John finally notices Josie and open up to her, Josie is shocked to find that John isn't nearly as content as she would have guessed.

Jacob Coote, on the other hand, is completely comfortable in his own skin. From a working class family, Jacob is confident about his own bright future (and his ability to get there by sheer force of will). Drawn to Jacob's radical ideas and striking personality, it's hard to tell if Josie and Jacob are perfect for each other or too similar to ever really last.

Looking for Alibrandi is a novel with many facets and many plots. All of the characters are dimensional, adding their own stories to the larger narrative of the novel. In addition to an excellent dissection of family relations, Looking for Alibrandi is one of the best novels about the immigrant experience I have ever read. Yes, Josie is probably third generation if not later, and true these characters are immigrants to Australia and not the USA. Still, the novel offers admirable commentary to anyone interested in immigration (and assimilation) in America and elsewhere.

I'm not one for re-reading books, unless they are something really really special.
My sister got me to read this book 6 years ago, by thrusting it into my hand while sporting a football shirt with Alibrandi splashed across the back.
I loved it then and love it now.
I was pregnant with Josiah at the time, and we were deciding on names. Josephine's grandmother calling her Jozzie clinched it for me, and our son has been Jozzie ever since.
Recently I felt compelled to revisit this book, and was as touched as the first time.
Funny, hilarious, informative, heartwrenching, recognisable and compellingly written.
Now I must watch the film, it's on my shelf ready!

Josephine has always felt like something of an outsider. She is a member of an Italian family but they are living in Australia, where many people give them a hard time. She also feels like she doesn't quite belong with the Italians, though. Her mother was an unmarried teenager when she had Josephine, and that made both of their lives difficult. Her mother never told who the father of her baby was and she was therefore disowned by her parents. Only after the death of Josephine's grandfather did they rejoin the family, and relations between Josephine's mother and grandmother are still strained.

Now Josephine is seventeen and in her last year of high school, and things are becoming even more confusing in her life. First of all, she is torn between two different guys she likes--one who seems perfect for her, cultured and suave and gentlemanly. The other is rough around the edges but she can't help being attracted to him anyway.

To make things even more complex, the father Josephine never knew is suddenly back in town and she can't seem to decide how she feels about him. She thought she'd never want to speak to him after what he did to her mother, but now that he is here she realizes she's missed having a father for all of these years.

I liked the love triangle Josephine found herself in. I also liked that this book gave me a look into what life would be like for a teenager living somewhere other than the United States. Some things were very similar, while others were surprisingly different.

I thought that Josephine's character was often over the top, especially when she was fighting with her mother or grandmother. She was more irrational than she should have been. I also thought that Josephine's relationship with her father was too smooth.

My good mate John down at Matilda's book store in Mount Waverley is now my "Reading Consultant" and his choice of books for me never disappoint and this novel is no exception. This book is a realistic look at the life of 17 year old Josephine who just wants to complete her HSC and go to University and become a lawyer. Her life however is complicated by the fact that she is illegitimate and Italian/Australian so she is caught between two cultures and this is used as a weapon against her by some of her nasty classmates. Furthermore Josephine has to deal with the Emotional Drama that is inherant in most European families .Josie is smart, witty and her emotional resilience comes into play when her bioligical father enters her life. This book is warm, touching and funny and naturally I give it 5 stars. Thanks again John!

This book is a testament for those people who admit that there are no unique premises anymore, only unique ways of telling them. Coming-of-age stories are tough because they can be a rather indistinguishable group with only the author's voice as the discriminant. Thank God Melina Marchetta's got one hell of a voice in this novel.

I'll admit that when I started reading this story, I thought it would be one of those formulaic, nothing-special tales about an obnoxious girl who goes to school, is in the middle of a family feud with her foul-tempered relatives, and through a series of unlikely events, falls "in love" with some bland boy whose only attribute is his good-looks. The beginning chapter, where you get to see a firsthand example of Josephine's cheekiness, didn't help in deterring my theory. But then... well, as they say, then it's all history. I got engrossed in the story. Josephine Alibrandi is sassy and sometimes too spoiled for her own good, but she's a fun character to read about. You find yourself laughing at her thoughts (not because they are petty but because they are truly funny) and you find that you can relate to her. This is especially true in the parts where you see her friends and the two boys who're special to her.

The part I liked best of this story, though, was the family aspect of it. Josephine's family is from Sicily and their culture shines through in many ways. I was amazed by the "family secrets" subplot, which was very cleverly crafted and contributed to the depth of this book in many ways. The relationships in the family are tested and we get to see what lies underneath the surface, what makes the family members the way they are, and what put everyone in the less-than-perfect predicament they're in when the novel begins.

In short: Melina Marchetta has written an unforgettable story with touching characters, a tight plot, and great wit. This is an all-time must-read and if you haven't read it yet, you're missing out big time.

I had my own picture painted about what I thought life on a remote island in the Pacific would be like. This book is far from my picture. This book is written in a way that gives you a really interesting idea of the reality of remote island living from an outsider's perspective. The author talks about the troubles that he and his girlfriend have adjusting and dealing with such a new type of life. And it's funny. It is really funny. The book is a great escape. You kind of feel involved in the story in a light-hearted way. I recommend this for a good read to just relax with.

This is a marvelously humorous and accurate account of living in a small country in the Pacific. Highly recommended!

I would not advise the reader to travel to Kiribati, but the book is a must read for those who've never really left their comfort zone in the U.S. The author paints a beautiful picture of the riveting blue ocean, the palm trees, the colors of the sunset. But he also paints a vivid portrait of a land that the world has forgotten; the terrible conditions that the natives endure daily, the lack of food and health system. I found myself cringing as I read of the reef-toilet, the soiled diapers floating in the water, and could picture it all.
Yet, Maarten pulls you into this story so well you find yourself admiring the daily trials he had to endure, and laughing at the self-deprecating way he tells the story. It was educational, hilarious and amazing. That his marriage lasted is the amazing part.
As an expat living in Iran in the 70s, I thought I had it rough. My idea of roughing was standing in the reservation line at the Ritz Carleton. But after reading this book, Iran was like living in Paris at the Ritz Hotel.
Dodie Cross, author of A Broad Abroad in Thailand: An Expat's Misadventures in the Land of Smiles.

This book was an amazing read. Pick up a next copy for your any trip it'll make even the rainiest days perfect.

I laughed out loud more than I am really willing to admit. This book is for anyone who has taken a trip to the third world or ever graduated from college with the dream of working for an NGO. His writing is easy to read and hard to put down. I loved it.

Horwitz's gambit is to retrace Cook's voyages as he chronicles his life. It's a good idea, and it's interesting (if depressing) to learn what Cook's stops have turned into. (Tahiti, once a paradise, is now a shabby tourist trap.) Horwitz's own explorations are given equal time to Cook's, which means that the biography of Cook is somewhat less detailed than you might want it to be. But he's an engaging writer.

Check my list, "Books About Explorers," for more recommendations.

Well, consider paradise thoroughly debunked, between Horwitz's far-ranging journeys of disassembly here and J. Maartin Troost's more narrowly focused The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific about real life on a South Pacific speck.

Horwitz applies his witty and accessible style to a popular cultural, anthropological, historical, and gastronomical view of Cook's travel stops and his impact on them. He even finds parallels to his earlier "Confederates in the Attic" (see my review there) in the way that the distant descendants of both English and native island-dwellers see their shared and separate histories. On these journeys, covering a wider geographic and ethnic range, Horwitz finds more room to spread his reportorial wings, and the results can be hilarious.

He is also often joined by an often-drunk Australian friend (Horwitz is married to an Australian and lived there for a few years), and the interplay between the two and the sights and people they meet on the way adds to the insights and insanity that ensues. But throughout the book, Horwitz weaves the background of Cook and his ships, crews, and journeys so that we learn more than we realize.

If you are interested in a more narrowly focused biography of Cook, consider (in addition to the ones Horowitz lists in his biography) Cook : The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook by Nicholas Thomas, which I review there and which came out shortly after Blue Latitudes.

In my research for Wai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawaii, I read a dozen accounts of Captain James Cook's deadly encounter with the natives of Hawaii in 1779. This included not only the Captains' journal, but that of seaman, John Ledyard, and that of first mate, Lt. King. When Tony Horwitz declared that in Blue Latitudes he would take us boldly where Captain Cook had gone before, I didn't expect to learn anything new. What I found was the most informative, well-researched, fun account of the famous explorer to date. Horwitz likens Cook's three voyages of discovery throughout Polynesia and the Northwest to that of the Startrek's explorations into deep space. His journalistic style and breezy sense of humor keep historical events fresh. I stuck closely to Horwitz account of the events in Kealakekua Bay in the telling of Wai-nani's story. Her first person narrative allows the reader to know what was happening in the Hawaiian culture on the fateful day the navigator lost his life. Controversy over the actual events that took place that week and why rages on, but Horwitz provides an even-handed,thoughtful point of view.

LindaBallouAuthor.com
Wai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawai'i-Her Epic Journey

An author such as Tony Horwitz is a rare find.
After reading his latest release (as of this review), "A Voyage Long and Strange", I had to backtrack to "Blue Latitudes". Glad I did.

Horwitz' slant to history is savvy with modern day adventure, wit and insight.
Following in the wake of Captain James Cook's three world voyages of the eighteenth century, the author painstakingly confronts hundreds of present day individuals from several South Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands to better understand the gist and consequences of Cook's discoveries.
This angle of story-telling makes history entertaining. Not a dull moment.

A plucky, energetic and informative read.

While this is one of his earlier books, i just discovered this author and love his interplay of current experience and history. As in his other works, a new level of understanding emerges about the earliest interplay of European contact with the native peoples and, unfortunately, the consequences that are with us today. Highly recommended.

This book is by far the best of all the guide books for Kauai if you are looking for an overview of all the island has to offer. Comprehensive and family oriented...really a treat. Helps you to feel a bit more like a local and less like Haole. It's too bad it is no longer in print...BUY it NOW while you can! I'd have given it a 5 star but our favorite resturaunt is not in there. (Olympic Cafe in Kapaa). For all I know the resturaunt wasn't around when she originally wrote it. The music on the CD is nice too, really sets you in the mood.

This book is packed full of great advice on things to do, sites to see and places to see while on Kauai. Definitely worth taking with you if you're lucky enough to take a vacation on Kauai

So much valuble information............ I carried it everywhere with me. I bought it first 16 years ago, mine was getting tattered so I purchased an updated edition.......... highly recommended!

Purchased this guide and the Kauai Revealed for an upcoming trip to the islands. Revealed is far and away a much more informative and seemingly provides unbiased assessments. Unlike most guide books it actually makes for interesting reading. Kauai Underground does not provide indepth enough descriptions and/or directions to sights. I gave the Underground 2 stars only because it came with the CD of Hawaiian music which I did find enjoyable.

This book was extremely disappointing. I have been visiting Kauai since 1994 and relying upon the excellent guidebook - The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook for all of those trips. I thought it might be fun to discover some new things on the island, so I purchased this "underground" book to discover some places and businesses that I might not yet have found. There is nothing underground about this book. It should be called "standard Kauai information" since it's really nothing more than a verbatim and poorly formatted listing of every business, place, and thing on the island. It's the same stuff you'd find with any other guidebook just much more poorly executed. The maps are extremely hard to find and use, the organization and index is nearly useless. There is only one thing in the entire book that was new and interesting to me - a mention of "peoples market" at Hwy 56 in Puhi. No phone number or address or directions were provided. Nobody in the area could help me find it, in fact, everyone said the instructions were impossible, as Hwy 56 does not even go to Puhi. This was typical of my experience with this frustrating book. If you're looking for a book on Kauai, I strongly recommend Ultimate Kauai Guidebook instead of this one.

The Case for Mars describes a way to send explorers and settlers to mars, an explanation of how colonization would work and an argument for why we should do both.

Robert Zubrin is an Aeronautical engineer who has worked on space projects. The Case for Mars has sufficient technical detail to make his arguments persuasive. The technical topics are well explained with out being overwhelming or tedious for a non-technical audience, like myself. There are notes at the end of some chapters that go into greater detail.

In the Case for Mars Zubrin explains his "Mars Direct" plan for piloted flights to Mars. Mars Direct was created in response to NASA's "90 day plan" for going to Mars. NASA's plan required building space stations and lots of research on novel engineering solutions. It would have been extremely expensive. The 90 day plan was the product of a bureaucracy that was trying to fund as many of its' existing projects as possible. Zubrin and his colleagues created the Mars Direct plan to use current technology to get astronauts to Mars safely, quickly and cheaply.

The first part of The Case for Mars explains how the Mars Direct plan would work, and why it is feasible. This is the best part of the book. It is interesting and detailed, but readable and persuasive.

Zubrin then goes on to explain how Mars would be colonized. The technical aspects of the explanation seem plausible to me. When he starts to describe how Mars colonies would be financially viable and independent he went off the tracks. The arguments involved a lot of hand waving and were no longer persuasive.

The end of the book is a polemic about the importance of having a frontier to the health of society. The reader gets a capsule history that seeks to demonstrate that all societies rot if they do not have a frontier.

I wish the space cadets would leave the business plans, sociology and political polemics to others. They should concentrate on topics they actually know something about.

The Case for Mars offers a clear convincing argument in favor of the Mars Direct plan for exploring mars. The rest of the book is annoying.

The vision that Robert Zubrin lays out in this book makes it the most important for anyone to read. Not only is it well written, Zubrin's ideas are outstanding and critical for our society to learn and embrace as we move quickly into the 21st century.

If ever I read a book on what visionaries with a practical side have to say, this is it.

The book was written in the early 1990's looking out 10 years to what would be possible. It was well researched and based on technical expertise.If asked, they could make this happen.

Well worth reading for anyone interested in space exploration.

Zubrin has a very interesting plan, which appears to be sound both technically and philosophically. While he certainly presents a compelling case for *how* we should go to Mars, he fails to actually present a case for *why* we should want to go to Mars in the first place.

Of all the places to go in the solar system, why Mars? What does Mars have to offer other than dust? What is on Mars that is not more easily accessible elsewhere in the solar system? These are important question to consider if one is going to invest resources and human lives in the conquest of space.

To build a successful colony, one needs raw materials as well as abundant energy. Mars is lacking on both counts. Water? How much is really available in the ice caps and subsurface? Energy? The amount of geothermal energy is questionable, as Mars is mostly dead from a geological standpoint. Solar energy is less than 1/3 of that found on Earth, requiring large arrays that must support themselves against gravity as well as be protected from dust storms. What raw minerals are available other than iron oxide (rust)?

No, all the necessary resources, and more, are available in the Asteroid Belt and the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Any additional energy expended in reaching them is far more than compensated for the fact that their wealth is not bound deep in a gravity well such as that of Mars. The reduced solar energy is not a limiting factor either, as collector arrays can be built as large as necessary when there are not constraints of gravity.

Finally, the space radiation issue is better addressed, as the Belt colony can dig itself in to an asteroid as deeply as necessary to provide adequate shielding.

Forget Mars, the Belt is where we need to go.

I was disappointed in the book. Dr. Zubrin spends far too much time faulting NASA and trying to say why we should not do anything but go to Mars. He does make good points with his theme of "living off the land". I don't believe this book will convince anyone outside those who already want to go to Mars that we need to go. I think it will give ammunition to those who dislike NASA and the space program in general.