australia and south pacific

This book is for the voyeur that wants a window into the lost age of adventure, those years before 1940. The book is rightly regarded as one of the greatest accounts of real life adventures ever written. It paints exhilarating, vivid pictures of risk taking, and of the human hunger for adventure and desire to return to experiencing life through ones primal instincts. This book is about survival, a chase, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. It sets The Sea against Man, thin odds against practical ingenuity, conventional academic thought against independent, irreverent, defiant thinkers. Reading about the author's 4,000-mile journey across huge expanses of treacherous ocean brings out the would-be adventurer in the reader. The adventurers' single mindedness and determination against all odds and in the face of nay saying experts (who condemned the journey from the start as foolish, and said their voyage never would or could succeed), sets an inspiring example of how determination and perseverance can lead to accomplishing what self-appointed experts and nay Sayers declare impossible. During their voyage the author and his team pushed the boundaries and commonplace notions of what is possible. The author in part wants us to understand that not all seemingly adventurous fools and are so foolish; that determination can see one across barren, stormy oceans, be they real or metaphorical. On completing the book, all that remains is for the reader to respond to its heed, to push ones own limits to their edge. In a corporate world where too often money is the primary force in leading us to act, where the value of an activity is measured by its potential financial payback, it is refreshing to be reminded of other motivations for action, and of other rewards. The ultimate reward of this book is that it can reawaken in the reader a primal instinct to pursue, instincts which often seems irrelevant or far away in our modern, comfortable lives... this book also reminds the reader of how to dream and the virtues of following dreams. The book serves to remind us of how, why, and where to find adventure ... personally, I walked away from the book exhilarated, and convinced that anything is possible, should I choose to look beyond conventional thought or lifestyle and reach for the stars. ***** Highly Recommended.

I first read of Thor Heyerdahl's voyage across the Pacific when I was in high-school and it had left a lasting impression on me. I recently ran across the book and reread it. Kon-Tiki is an amazing story of Heyerdahl's determination to prove a theory that it is possible to sail from Peru to the South Pacific islands by raft. He puts together a successful expedition, and with a lot of luck manages to prove his point. Along the way, you get a history lesson, geography lesson, marine biology lesson, and a wonderful sea-faring adventure story all in a fast-paced book. And with the photographs accompanying the prose, you feel like you too are on the raft with them.

Early in "Kon-Tiki," as Thor Heyerdahl and his compatriots are a assembling make-shift raft to float across the Pacific, a government official calls Heyerdahl to his office.

"Are your parents living?" the official asks.

Yes, says Heyerdahl.

"Your mother and father will be very grieved when they hear of your death," says the official.

It was a reasonable assumption. What Heyerdahl and his five Norwegian friends were proposing was beyond audacious -- it was foolhardy, by any standard. Here were six young men, none with sailing experience, who were building their own Inca-style raft out of balsa logs and hemp ropes and planning to sail it across thousands of miles of ocean from Peru to the South Seas.

Surely, they would die.

Of course, they didn't. For over 100 days, the Kon-Tiki bobbed along like a cork in high and low seas making slow but steady progress before eventually landing the men on an island in French Polynesia. In doing so, Heyerdahl, an anthropologist, had made his case that it was possible that the South Sea islands had been populated by immigrants floating on rafts from South America.

It was a remarkable accomplishment, and while it is a tale imperfectly told, "Kon-Tiki" is quite worth reading.

This is a book where the events carry the writing. For the most part, Heyerdahl does an able job of presenting the story, but he curiously skips over some parts. For instance, he doesn't explain clearly why he allowed the voyage to begin by having the Kon-Tiki towed out of port and many miles out to sea. After all, wasn't the point of the expedition to show that the raft could make it all the way on its own? (There may have been a good reason -- perhaps to avoid shipping traffic -- but he doesn't say what it is.)

Because the trip actually turned out to be easier than expected, the middle section becomes somewhat flat. The crew had plenty of fish to eat, and collected rain water to drink. They found ways to make the craft easy to steer.

Also, while Heyerdahl is detailed in his descriptions of the fish they saw while crossing the ocean, he fails to illuminate the personalities of his five crewmates. Even by the end of the book, they remained indistiguishable in my mind.

These are weaknesses, yes, but hardly fatal ones, and the overall boldness of this adventure is what carries this book. There are exciting moments -- when one of the men falls overboard and is nearly lost, and when the Kon-Tiki dramatically crashes into a reef at the end of its voyage. And the crew's short stay on an island inhabited by just 127 villagers is memorable for its idyllic picture of the South Seas lifestyle.