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Summary: Learning is fun!
Review: I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan, but I avoided this book for so long because I thought it would be scientific/tree-hugging droll. After a friend recommended it highly, I picked it up and found how wrong I was! It tells a very interesting recap of DA's adventures around the globe searching for species of animals that are going extinct, and the typical Douglas Adams humor shines through the entire thing.
I'm glad they included the picture section in the middle to give context to the travels and animals.
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Summary: What he really meant
Review: Douglas Adams' favourite work is also his finest. His passion for the living world and frustration with, but ultimate love for, humanity - ideas which featured ever more prominently in his fiction - are to the fore here, dressed in his characteristic wit and style. We have lost not just our best fantasist, but a fine journalist.
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Summary: Humor helps sell serious science!
Review: While perusing used book stores in Cairo, Egypt in a desperate search for humor by Douglas Adams I found this jewel.I snapped it up without reading the dust jacket. Initially, I was a little disappointed, as I was spoiled by his raucous humor in the Hitchhiker Guide series. Bit-by-bit, or, as they say in Arabic, waheda wahed, I found myself engrossed by his insight into just exactly why we should care that Earth is about to lose so many species of creatures. That method, devoid of preaching and absent of reams of sky-is-falling statistical data is exactly why Last Chance To See is a must read for all of us. Buy this book. Read it. Then, if you dare, pass it on to your best friend!
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Summary: Not the animals.
Review: Douglas Adams set out to look for endangered animals, but it was the people he meet on his way that turned out to be more interesting. Take Dr Struan Sutherland, the venom expert. His expertise "is that of getting other people to handle the dangerous animals." and his hobbies are "gardening--with gloves; fishing--with boots; traveling--with care." And when asked if there's any venomous creature he's particularly fond of. "There was," he said, "but she left me."
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Summary: Last Chance to See
Review: The book Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine take you on a journey. Within this journey you come to learn the life of many animals that are about to become extint. Some of these animals you have never even heard of before such as the kakapo, who is a very friendly bird with unsual mating habits. Or the dangerous Kamodo Dragon with its deadly saliva. In all the author makes you feel compassion and understanding for these animals. You learn about their eating habits, mating habits, and natural habitat that they once lived in. You learn that many of these animals are becoming extinct because of mans actions. In all this is a good book that involves humor and education.
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Summary: Once It¿s Gone, It¿s Gone.
Review: "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwadine is a great book that teaches its readers about the worldwide problem that there is about endangered species, and how in the last couple of decades it has been rising because of the humans fault. This book contains a little of everything. It contains comedy, tragedy, and a lot of information.
The information that it carries is all about the animals that he and Carwadine go to visit in the wild. They go to visit animals such as the Mountain Gorilla and White Rhinoceros from Zaire, Africa, the Yangtze River dolphin, from China, and the Komodo Dragon, from Komodo. All through out each story, Douglas tells us interesting facts about the animal that they are visiting, and the habitat in which the animal lives.
For example, did you know that there are more poisonous snakes per square meter on Komodo than on any equivalent area on earth? Well, if you didn't, now you do.
All though out their journey, Adams and Carwadine have something funny to do. On every story in the book, there is something funny that either of them, or both, do. For example, when they were near the Yangtze river, they wanted to see how the noise pollution in the river was like, but they forgot to get water proof microphones, so what they did is that they went and bought condoms to cover the microphone with. They didn't speak Chinese, and the Chinese didn't speak English, so they had to figure out a way to tell them that they needed condoms. If you want to find out what they did, read the book, otherwise I'd be spoiling it for you, but to me, this scene was hilarious.
This is also a tragic book, since in it they go and visit animals that are on the verge of extinction because of our fault. For example, in New Zealand, the Kakapo, a very fat parrot that forgot how to fly, were almost completely wiped of because explorers that went to explore those island brought their pet cats and stoats and lost them, they started eating these poor flightless birds. Now there are a few of them left and they only live in two islands in which every moving thing was killed to ensure their survival.
There is a lot of information that could be acquired from reading this book, but don't take my word for it, go and read it yourself.
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Summary: A book of humor and knowledge.
Review: Last chance to see is a really interesting book that keeps you entertained through out its reading.
Douglas Adams takes you on a great adventure around the world sharing his stories about searching for these endangered animals.
He takes you to places like Kamodo island the home of the man eating kamodo dragon.
Adams also comes face to face with a wild silver back gorilla and was so close the gorilla curiously reached out and touched his writing pencil. Not only is this book about endangered animals that can only be found in certain places of the planet, but Adams tells you about the funny chaotic stuff they had to go through in order to find these animals.
I could picture someone like Chevy Chase starring in a movie about this book.
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Summary: A Different World To be Explored
Review: Reading "Last Chance to see", I asked myself, whether, it was our last chance to see these animals. I love reading books but I never had the opportunity to read a book like this one. Reading the first pages didn't really catch my attention, as a matter of fact I wasn't particular interested in it but I kept on reading, until I found myself not letting go of the book. The way the author describes the animals is very engaging for example, when he describes the aye-aye he writes, "The aye-aye is a nocturnal lemur. It is a very strange looking animal that seems to have been assembled from bits of other animals. It looks like a large cat with a bat's ears, a beavers teeth, a tail like a large ostrich feather, a middle finger like a long dead twig, and enormous eyes that seem to peer past you into a totally different world which exist just over your left shoulder". Not only is the book funny but it also makes you think if maybe humans are to blame for the extinction of these animals. I give this book "Two thumps up".
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Summary: A Good Book For Everyone
Review: Last Chance to See was a really a great book! Two zoologists, Adam Douglas and Mark Carwardine take you on an adventure around the world to various places while they study endangered species. Although written in 1985-1989 Adam Douglas does an excellent job with letting the reader fill as if they are taking the journey with him. He uses humor and great metaphors while he is informing readers of what is out there. Adam and Mark's message in the book is strong, it really is our last chance to see some of these exotic yet endangered species. They open your eyes and for some make you think about what is really going on, the rest is really up to you if you want to find any way to help. The thing I liked the most about the book was the descriptions, the colorful pictures were great but, without them the book still would have been good. I would highly recommend that everyone should read this book.
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Summary: It Just Might be the "Last Chance To See"
Review: First off I would just like to say that I truly enjoyed reading this book. Every aspect of this book was great. I loved the setting, the characters, the information, and the format.
The setting of "Last Chance to See" was in many different places in Africa. This kept me interested thoughout the duration of this book. This book also had a lot of interesting information on endanged animals. I enjoyed reading about the Komodo dragon, the white rhino and the silverback mountain gorilla. I also enjoyed this book because it was very informative and funny. Douglas Adams used a lot of comedy to get his point across.
This book made me realize that there are a lot of species that are going extinct or are in danger of becoming extinct. I know that animals are partly to blame for these species becoming extinct, but I can't help but think that us humans have played a bigger role in the dissapearence of these species.
I really recommend that you read this book. Im the type of person that only enjoys action and horror books and I really enjoyed this book. If I can read this book the whole way through then I'm sure that anyone can!
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