Rating: 
Summary: A bloody mad scientist in a mad country = great read !
Review: A thoroughly enjoyable book and every bit as extraordinary as the title. Its rare to find a scientist who can tell a great story. Tim takes you on an enthralling adventure through New Guinea and Irian Jara and invites you to rejoice and despair with him in his quest for illusive marsupials in the uncompromising highlands. A wonderful read that intoduced me to country I knew very little about. I look forward to reading Tim's next book "The Explorers".
Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece in which women are invisible
Review: As one who has traveled in New Guinea 8 times, I found this book suspenseful and fascinating. Flannery vividly portrays the magnificent landscapes he explored, and introduces us to wild creatures that are disappearing from the earth. And he captures well the tragic impact of an outside world greedy for the island's natural resources, especially in Irian Jaya.I have only two reservations. First, even recognizing that Flannery's mission was to collect rare mammals, I thought he conveyed too little of the richness and complexity of tribal life. The savage nature of the people was stressed, rather than their loyalties and kindnesses. Second, women were virtually invisible in the narrative.
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Summary: full of stuff I never knew - or imagined - about New Guinea
Review: Aside from all I learned about another culture and mammals I had never heard of, I was impressed by the author's vocabulary. I did manage to find "ensorcell" in my Oxford complete dictionary, but does anyone know what "farcarted" means? as in "they ate until they were farcarted." Not in my dictionaries.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking, humorous and poignant
Review: Flannery is one of a kind. He is to New Guinea what Perry and Amundson are to the poles, a first-comer .... one of the first to explore and document the stone age peoples of the mysterious island wilderness in the last days of its age of innocence.
Yes, there are cannibals, with bones in their noses and gourds worn on their penis, yet Flannery somehow manages to get the reader to empathize with these people, to understand their foibles and traditions, and to feel regret that their ancient ways are going, going, gone ... forever. Take the chapter where he goes in pursuit of the Bulmer's Fruit Fly Bat -- you suffer with him the agonies of failure and the desperations of the search, and the exhilaration of success. Or follow along with his learning experiences among the native tribes and come to actually understand the hows and whys of the way the led their lives, even to discovering there were (to the natives) valid reasons for their rare acts of cannibalism.
Although he describes some of the most spectacular natural wonders of the world, the reader comes to know that Papua New Guinea will never rate very highly as a tourist destination, but you'll have to read this book to appreciate the reasons why.
Think you couldn't possibly be interested in such things? Try twenty pages of this charming book; the images will lived in your memory forever.
Hooroo, Tim! Bonzer yarn, mate!
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Summary: Heads up - new book coming
Review: Flannery's forthcoming Eternal Frontier is absolutely wonderful, something to watch for. As a book reviewer, I got to read it in galleys - all except the illustrations. So while I cannot say anything meaningful about the pictures, the writing is superb.
Rating:
Summary: Heads up - new book coming
Review: Flannery's forthcoming Eternal Frontier is absolutely wonderful, something to watch for. As a book reviewer, I got to read it in galleys - all except the illustrations. So while I cannot say anything meaningful about the pictures, the writing is superb.
Rating: 
Summary: Why the obsession with genitals?
Review: I suppose the sub-title should have warned me, but I wondered why Flannery could not seem to write more than a page or two without referring to the male genitals. Otherwise this is an interesting book, which gives a rather stark picture of the conditions in PNG. It also raised interesting questions about the introduction of western values to a primitive culture, which on the one hand is in need of some civilising in terms of the cannibalism, the massacring of villages and the subjection of women, while on the other hand is need of preserving vis a vis religious and cultural beliefs. Did anyone else wonder if Father Michaelhod really was a pederast?
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Summary: Exciting and sometimes hilarous natural history book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful book! In it, mammalogist Tim Flannery regales us with tales from his many years in New Guinea, searching for new species of mammals on the island, the second largest in the world. A difficult island to work in - highly mountainous; extremely few roads, most villages so isolated that they can only be reached by small planes flying to landing strips hacked out of the jungle; parts of it some of the rainiest spots on earth, some areas receiving 11 meters or more of rain a year; possessing many dangerous animals ranging from crocodiles to snakes to huge spiders; tropical diseases and parasites a real problem in many areas (including malaria and scrub typhus, from which Flannery almost died from when bit by an infected tick) ' Flannery had his work cut out for them as he spent over two decades on the island, both in the eastern half, the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, and the western section, Irian Jaya, part of Indonesia. Flannery is a highly accomplished scientist, having discovered 16 new species of mammals in Melanesia, many of them in New Guinea. Many of these and others are described in the book, and make for fascinating reading. We meet the Black-tailed Giant-rat, the bite from its two centimeter long razor sharp incisors much feared by the inhabitants of the island. The Three-striped Dasyure, a vividly marked rat-sized marsupial predator, one of New Guinea's few mammals active during daylight hours. The Snow Mountains Robin, one of the rarest birds in the world, found in the high alpine regions of the Meren Glacier in Irian Jaya, one of the very few equatorial glaciers in the world. _Antechinus, a small carnivorous marsupial notable in that the male only lives for 11 months, existing only to breed. The diminutive, dingo-like New Guinea singing dog, which arrived in the islands some 2,000 years ago. The six o'clock cicada, a tremendously loud insect that received its name from its trill it emits roughly 6am and 6pm daily. The famous Birds of Paradise, breathtaking in their beauty, several species of which are extremely rare. He also describes the Long-fingered Triok, a black and white skunk smelling possum with the fourth finger of each hand a great elongated probe for finding insect larvae; you never know what he is going to find next lurking in the barely explored misty peaks and dripping jungles of the island.
Three of the most remarkable animals are ones that Flannery discovered or in one case rediscovered. One is _Maokopia ronaldi_, an extinct marsupial herbivore that once dwelt in the high mountain forests. Panda-like in appearance, size, and probably habits, Flannery named this new genus and species from fossils he found in Irian Jaya. Bulmer's Fruit-bat, a bat though extinct for 12,000 years, the largest cave dwelling bat in the world, Flannery was elated to have found them alive in extremely rugged western Papua New Guinea. The one though that Flannery is the most proud of discovering was the Dingiso, a new species of tree-kangaroo he found in the alpine areas of Irian Jaya, a beautiful black and white animal, surprising tame, threatened but fortunately partially protected by native taboos against harming them. However, as remarkable as all of that is, one could argue that the real stars of this book are the people of New Guinea, particularly the indigenous Melanesian peoples that Flannery spends a great deal of time with and clearly loves. Much of his time researching in the field he was based out of the villages of such people as the Wopkaimin, the Telefol, and the Goilala where he became fast friends with many throughout the island, in both countries, viewing them not as savage barbarians, but as noble, often quite kind people, their older generation vast repositories of cultural and natural history lore. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the books were the many stories about life in those villages, some of the tales tragic, others heartwarming, and many hilarious. Particularly fascinating was what he wrote about the history of cannibalism on the island. Apparently it did exist in the not too distant past, actually in the living memory of some of the villagers he encountered. Though not an every day occurrence by any means, cannibalism was an important part of New Guinea life; indeed, one group Flannery spent some time with, the Miyanmin, were once avid raiders, and actually referred to the neighboring Atbalmin people as 'bokis es bilong miplea,' which more or less translates into something like 'our refrigerator.' Though cannibalism is now a thing of the past, its effects are still felt he writes, as villages once got some of their population from raids of other villages, the adults of that village were consumed and the children raised as their own; now, that is no longer a source of new people for villages and some are facing some depopulation as a result. Flannery sounds several cautionary notes in his book. Several species of New Guinea mammals and birds are in serious danger of extinction from over hunting. Though New Guinea is still a land largely without roads, more and more appear all the time, opening up virgin lands for hunters, loggers, and miners. Indeed in Irian Jaya the latter two are devastating ever larger sections of the island; the massive Freeport mine, which exports over ten million dollars worth of minerals daily, has destroyed large sections of forest with waste mine tailings. He also worries about the future of the people, particularly in Irian Jaya. He believes that in an attempt to make that land more like the rest of Indonesia it is causing not only environmental damage but also cultural damage. Indeed there are concerns over human rights abuses in Irian Jaya, of dissidents disappearing, of remote villagers forced to wear modern clothing and abandon their pig eating culture by distant Muslim politicians, who often find native culture abhorrent. Recommended.
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Summary: great book with absolutely no previous interest
Review: I thought this was a great book. I am on airplanes all the time and could not put it down even for dinner. I really did not have any particular interest in tree kangaroos or bats or penis gourds but thought this book was well written and presented a variety of information very well. I particulary enjoyed the last part of the book with the very explicit commentary on Indonesia. The information shed brighter light on why the US is so "gentle" to quote Clinton with the oppressive Indonesian military. No more items made in Indonesia for me.
Rating:
Summary: A magnificent real life adventure
Review: I'm familiar with the Australian version, same book but without the sales increasing subtitle including the reference to Penis Gourds. Tim Flannery is a scientist with writing style that is simulatenously eloquent and explanatory. One learns about the amazing and newly discovered mammals of Papua New Guinea in the context of his amazing experiences. Readers learn of his unique interaction with the various tribes, stories that almost make cannibalism seem natural within the local environment. A great book for anyone, even fashion magazine junkies like myself.
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