What an absolutely wonderful book. I truly loved this one. Despite the subject matter being rather sad, even more so considering the fact that Douglas Adams himself is no longer with us, I couldn't help but feel happy as I read through his travel log. His genuine care and unmistakeable wit make this a book to remember. It has instantly become one of my favourite, if not my favourite non fiction book. The fact that it described getting around the world in the 80s adds an extra nostalgic note for modern day readers (I was only born in '87) that makes this one even more fun to read. Despite the fact that we already lost Adams and a couple of the animals in this book, I still leave it feeling hopeful. It's good to know that there are still magical places and decent people in this world.

One tiny down side I found is that the pictures included in the book are sort of scattered about in a different order than the chapters, so it was a bit of leafing around to try and match picture with story, though that is a minor gripe if ever there was one. The only real complaint I have only speaks to how much I liked the book. The journey by Adams and Carwardine comprised 9 "main" animals. Both the radio programme and the book however, contain only 7, though not the same 7. The radio programma excluded the mountain gorilla and the northern white rhino, whilst this book left out the amazonian manatee and the juan fernandez fur seal. I'm not sure why that is but I'm very much saddened that we didn't get the complete work. I was more than up for two more chapters of this.

For anyone who liked this, the tv series "Last Chance To See, In the footsteps of Douglas Adams" is definitely worth it as well.

2024/2025 reread: Still as great as the first time I read it. One of my all time favourites!

Review: Last Chance to See (Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine) This lovely little "travel" book was lent to me by a coworker. It came out in 1990, is a non-fiction recounting of the adventures of these two to have a last chance, perhaps, to see animals that were on the brink of extinction. That aspect of the book was alternately sad and hopeful; I think but am not sure that all the animals they went in search of have not yet gone extinct. But this is a lusty jaunty book, of course, because it was written largely by Douglas Adams, of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame, and the tone is quite distinctive. So it read easily. The adventures take us to many different and difficult of access places in the world, and in every spot (fraught with travel horror stories), you learn not just about the animals that they hope to see, but about the animals we humans are. Let yourself experience, then, the Komodo dragons of Indonesia, the aye-aye of Madagascar, the northern white rhinoceros of Zaire, the kakapos of New Zealand, the baiji blind dolphins of the Yangtze river in China, the Rodrigues fruit bats of Mauritius... and others.

Really interesting audiobook. Great performance from Kaminski as narrator.
But it could have been mentionted in the description of the audiobook that the original book was released in 1992 (!!!!) or so.
So ... the data ist realy outdatet. I mean, this audiobook was released in 2017!
Ehm, okay...

I can tell you by now: the kakapo is still real. This special form of parrot is still alive. Wow. Because these seem to be so dumb animals ...

The essence of the book for me is:
It's because of humans animal-species die out. AND ...
It's because of humans some animal species do not die out. Some humans comprehend the 'value' of some animals and suddenly some "stupid" (stupid, because this parrot never saw a predator before) parrot in New Zealand is super important.

Even in 1988 did chinese admins account for the value of the unique River Dolphin.

In fact: Great Read, Great speaker, but awfully outdatet in 2019.

Thank you for writing this book.

Book reviews remind me of high school and sweating over how to make a great book sound appealing without giving away too much information. I'm not sure how to do it so I'll just say that this book is fantastic and I loved it.. It's moving, funny and fill of interesting and sobering information that left me awe struck at how beautiful the world is and saddened by how destructive humans are.

One of my all-time favorites. The beauty of nature and some of the absurdity of human bureaucracy as shown in Cawardine's beautiful pictures and told in Adam's unmistakable style. This is a book to read if you loved "Hitchhiker's guide" or if you just thought it was OK. Or if you hated it.

Douglas Adams is the funniest writer I've ever encountered. You know someone has a talent for humor when they can write a book about endangered species and make it hilarious. Adams does treat the subject with the respect it deserves, however. Reading this book will really make you step back and look at how we humans have destroyed the habitats of so many unique and interesting creatures. Because the issue of conservation is so important, I think this is a book that everyone would benefit from reading.

Of course I expected Adams to be excellent, but I wasn't sure what to expect of a non-fiction book on a quite serious, indeed, a sad topic. But Adams manages to blend his humour seamlessly in with the story about endangered species. There is so many highlights in the book, it's hard to pick out any particular one - from "You die, of course. That is what deadly means" to the "rudimentary parachute abilities of kakapos".

There is an excellent audio rendition of parts of the book by Adams himself. This is highly recommended, too!

I'm glad I ended up owning a copy of this book because my first impulse upon finishing was to pass it around to as many people as possible. There were so many passages I wanted to read aloud and share. Of course, it's devastating to think how in the time since this book was written things have gotten so much worse. Plus we no longer have Douglas Adams to help us make sense of things and laugh despite at all. But I guess we have to take comfort where we can find it, and at least we have this book.

I was surprised to discover that one of the authors of this book was also the author of the comedic science fiction novel, A Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Turns out Douglas Adams was also a staunch advocate of endangered animals.

Published in 1990 and written about his travels in the 1980s, I thought this book might be too dated to be enjoyable. But it very much still is. One of the outmoded things he wrote about was the dial telephones in New Zealand and how they dialed in the opposite direction. Were we still using dial phones in the 1980s? I can't remember.

Adams wanted us to learn from his travels that there are many endangered creatures out there that we can still help. Unfortunately, when I googled some of the animals he described, they didn't make it to this decade. This made me very sad. The perseverance of the people watching out for them at the time sounded so hopeful. On a happier note, my favorite animal characters in this book, the Kakapos birds, are still hanging on to this present day. I listened to the Kakapo male's mating call on the internet. It sounds like a tuba at the rate a human heart beats.

Adam's writing was never preachy and didn't try to make the reader feel guilty. I found his dry British humor so hilarious that I laughed out loud at some of his stories. I haven't done that with a book in quite a while. I've never been inclined to read the Hitch Hiker series. Now I think I will.

This is actually NOT the audio edition I listened to. The one I listened to can't be found for some reason. One of the reasons I was persuaded to listen despite having the paperback was that Douglas Adams himself was reading the book! Yep, he already knew audiobooks would be the way to go. Smart man.

In the 80s, environmentalism wasn't the it-word it is nowadays. In fact, many things were different. Douglas Adams and Stephen Fry were the first two people in the UK to buy/own a Macintosh for example. You couldn't take hi-res photographs and videos with your smartphone. In fact, there were no smartphones. I know, it's alright, don't hyperventilate, we're in 2020 now and we all have those creature comforts and can hardly imagine living without them.
Some countries are STILL not all that "developed" and barely have electricity. No public transport with regular schedules either. So imagine how much worse those places were back then!
Why is that important? Because organizing a trip to remote places was a nightmare. Even more so than today. And you didn't have the lifeline of a portable phone to call for help anywhere at any moment. A weird and ridiculous nightmare that made you want to scream and tear your hair out. If you don't believe me, read this book.
Moreover, with the world having been less connected than it is now, less accessible than it is now, people also were even less aware of things than today - it was too easy to overlook them. Douglas Adams refused to accept that and was one of the first to do what is so popular nowadays: he got funding for an expedition to visit some of the most endangered animals on the planet to broadcast his endeavors for BBC radio and sell a book with his travelogue (also not too well known a genre back then) afterwards, slapping knowledge around people's heads.
Because as much as he loved technology, he also loved the natural world.

He thus teamed up with zoologist Mark Cawardine and set out to see the Aye-Aye on Madagascar, Komodo dragon on - you guessed it - Komodo, the Yangtze river dolphin (or Baiji) in China, the Northern white rhino and gorillas in Africa, the kakapo in New Zealand and many other animals along the way.

What the reader gets is not just the account of which mountain they walked up to and which boats they took. We get a hilarious look at a writer and his desperate attempt to not freak out over mosquitos in his sleeping quarters, buying condoms in China (and don’t get me started on the aftershave affair), the audaciously obvious corruption in African airports, the despair of anyone caring about more than just homo sapiens, the incredible experience of meeting gorillas, the weirdness of mother nature's creations and much MUCH more.

The book is informative, yes, but Douglas Adams didn't just have a way with words. Anyone, who knows even only one of his other books, knows how he managed to tell you any story with such a unique sense of humour that reading / listening to his story was actually dangerous (oxygen deprivation from laughing too hard is a serious concern of DNA readers).

This book was his favourite and I agree. It's entirely underrated because he was decades ahead of his time - again. It is scary and it will make you cry (not just from laughter), but it is also wonderfully heartwarming and reaffirming and simply fantastic!

If you are interested in more info about the actual expedition, read my review of the paperback.

Douglas Adams has such a disarming style, filling every page with witty takes - a joy to read, whether they're observations about rare species on the brink of devastation or stories told in unaccommodating airports and hotels. Pairs conservational interests with dry, farcical humour. Love it.