Product Description
This book presents a portrait of the Albans, a seafaring tribe who originated in the country now known as Scotland. Battered by repeated Celtic, Norse and Roman invasions, the Albans fled west, first to Iceland, then to Greenland and finally across the Atlantic to Canada. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Alban Quest seems to be the British publication of "The Farfarers"
This is not a review so much as a suggestion regarding this one book, The Alban quest.
(Although I should say that I have very much enjoyed reading Farley Mowat's The Siberians; The People of the Deer; and Never Cry Wolf. I reverently treasure Mr Mowat's perspective.)

Please be advised that, if you are considering buying the book The Alban Quest, it seems to be the same book as The Farfarers. This I gather from the last sentence of the excerpt below, which is pasted directly from the Wikipedia entry about the book The Farfarers:

"The Farfarers: Before the Norse (2000) is a book by Farley Mowat that sets out a theory about pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Mowat's thesis is that even before the Vikings, North America was discovered and settled by Europeans originating from Orkney who reached Canada after a generation-spanning migration that used Iceland and Greenland as 'stepping stones'. Mowat's ideas are controversial and have been accused of being over-speculative. The book has been published in the UK as The Alban Quest."

I can't say what all the specific differences may be between the two publications (for example one publication has three fewer pages than the other), but I myself am ordering The Farfarers because it was published one year later than The Alban Quest, and I speculate that should any improvements have been requested by the author, they may have been realized in the later edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Mowat's passion for the North knows no bounds
One of his lesser known books, Sibir chronicles the author's experiences during two trips to the Soviet Union during the late 1960s.A lover of the North, Mowat had written passionately and extensively about it from the Canadian perspective, and had now been given the opportunity to see how the peoples of the North faired under Communist rule.Naturally, he found things to be somewhat different, most notably in the manner in which these peoples were (evidently) treated.In general, he observed that the native peoples of Siberia--under the rule of a totalitarian regime--were better treated than those in Canada.But the fact still remains, however, that to a greater degree than in Canada, the Russians had settled Siberia and hence conquered it in the typical western fashion.While critical of such encroachments in a North American context, Mowat is quite clearly impressed by the manner in which it was accomplished in Siberia, and was equally impressed by the resiliant spirit of the newer Siberians.Still, the author is not so easily enamoured by the workings of any authoritarian governmental system, and his contempt for the Soviet politicians does not go unmentioned.Despite this, the bookmay have played a part in putting him in the bad books of another authoritarian regime, the results of which he chronicles in the slim volume entitled My Discovery of America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Highly recommended.
Highly recommended if you enjoy reading about arctic exploration. They should bring this book (and the rest of this trilogy)

More First Hand Accounts
I found this second volume of Farley Mowat's TOP OF THE WORLD TRILOGY even more readable that the first. This one deals almost exclusively with the efforts of people to get further and further north, culminating in attempts to reach the North Pole.

What makes these accounts different from the others available is its reliance on presenting the stories in the words of the participants. Most of the reading is from the accounts of the explorers themselves. Mowat simply throws in an introduction, occasional comments for each narrative and an epilog for each venture.

With this style of presentation, the story is of necessity selective. It does not purport to be a complete account of all polar ventures. It does, however, give a flavor of the times and the trials undertaken by those who lived them.

This is a good read for those who are interested in the genre of exploration and adventure.

Formidable history of Arctic exploration
This is the second volume of the "Top of the World" trilogy by Canadian writer Farley Mowat. In this formidable historical series, Mowat retraces the steps of the early explorers into Canada's northern realms. Volume one,"Ordeal by Ice" told us of some of the earliest expeditions into Hudson'sBay and of the difficulties faced by inexperienced men in ill-equippedships. Indeed, those who set out were frequently never heard from again andtheir stories have been pieced together, often many years later, by thediscovery of diaries under rocky cairns and from information gleaned fromEskimos who came across the men at some stage during their struggles. Thestories are quite fantastic and there is an atmosphere of outlandishadventure throughout these books, making them difficult to put down. Volumetwo, "The Polar Passion," recounts the fascination exerted by the idea ofreaching the North Pole, and the results of some of the early expeditions.Drawing from primary sources, Mowat lets the expedition members tell thestory themselves, as much as possible. He contents himself with drawingthem all together and setting them against an historical background thatallows us to have a wider perspective of the events. It has obviously beena long labour of love for Mowat and I feel as though a considerable debt isowing to him, for having made this material available to us in such areadable and coherent form. ... Read more

Product Description
Farely Mowat's best-loved book tells the splendidly entertaining story of his boyhood on the Canadian prairies. Mutt's pedigree was uncertain, but his madness was indisputable. He climbed tress and ladders, rode passenger in an open car wearing goggles and displaying hunting skills that bordered on sheer genius. He was a marvelous dog, worthy of an unusual boy growing up in a raw, untamed wilderness.


From the Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Source Narrative Adventure
I have long been fascinated by the stories of the exploration of the Arctic and the search for the Northwest Passage. I have read many accounts and have been enthralled by them all. This account, though, is different. Instead of being a narrative of the acts of others, it is a reprint of original letters and journals from the explorers themselves. This provided a new and valuable insight into the brave men who made these journeys.

Farley Mowat Introduces each example with a bit of background but then lets the words of the explorers speak for themselves. He usually finishes with a bit of summary. The choices are not always the most famous or the best known and they are all the more valuable for that. It is well worth reading.

I personally found the narratives written by other writers to be more engrossing and interesting in their presentations but reading from the originals has been valuable.
... Read more

Product Description
Deep in the volcano country of central Africa live some of the rarest, most intriguing animals on earth -- the mountain gorillas. Here, in the mist-shrouded forests, Dian Fossey courageously dedicated her life to studying them. Here she patiently waited until the luminous-eyed gorillas accepted her presence, hugged her, and loved her...while she fought for their survival against poachers, callous researchers, zoo collectors, and local bureaucrats. And here, surrounded by these enemies, she died, mysteriously and brutally murdered.

Now, one of the world's most respected naturalist writers draws for the first time ever on Dian Fossey's personal writings to reveal the true story of a magnificent obsession...one woman's enormous empathy for a highly intelligent, desperately endangered animal -- and how it ruled her life, her work, and her heart. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

"A woman who gave herself completely to those she loved."
When it came to dealing with people, Dian Fossey was sometimes her own worst enemy, but her dedication to saving the African mountain gorilla and its habitat in Rwanda is indisputable.Describing himself as an "editorial collaborator," rather than as a biographer, Farley Mowat assembles Fossey's story from her never-before-printed journals and private papers, inserting them directly into the book in boldface so she can tell her own story.From her founding of the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda in 1967, until her murder there in December, 1985, Fossey battled to save "those she loved" from poaching, abduction, and dismemberment.

Throughout her eighteen years at Karisoke, Fossey studied organized groups of gorillas to whom she became so familiar that they would even touch her.As fierce and protective of her own "turf" as a silverback, however, she refused to bend to the exigencies of the political climate and funding requirements and made innumerable enemies.When local herdsmen exerted their age-old rights to graze cattle on "her" mountain, Fossey shot the cattle.When poachers hurt her gorillas, she pursued them, even kidnapping the four-year-old son of one of them to force his surrender.When students at her own Center disagreed with her, she could be brutal.

Fossey also fought local officials, park guards, and conservators who took bribes and staged events in order to protect their payoffs.She battled conservation organizations which wanted to get her funds, rival researchers who wanted to take over her project, and governmental officials who saw tourism in the park as a source of wealth and graft.Always fighting with ferocity, she made no effort to see another point of view or compromise.Her unsolved murder in 1985, by someone who knew the layout of her cabin, could have been by someone from any of these alienated groups.

Mowat presents Fossey as a lonely warrior who never found personal peace, a woman who was instrumental in drawing pubic attention to the plight of the mountain gorilla but who was less sucessful than she had hoped.As he points out in his Epilogue, her cause has been continued by some of the researchers who studied with her.Two of those, Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, continue the story of the gorillas from the death of Fossey through 1993's disastrous Rwandan Civil War.Their book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land, reflects a more conciliatory viewpoint than that of Fossey.Mary Whipple

A sympathetic portrait of a complicated woman
Another engrossing and fascinating Mowat title, another Mowat "must read", "Woman in the Mists" is the sympathetic biography of a woman whose work gave us a window into the world of the mountain gorilla, a species to whose protection and conservation she was devoted.By alternating excerpts from her diary entries and personal letters with his own descriptive text, Mowat brings Dian Fossey, a powerfully willed and often abrasive woman, to life.Her youthful years, young adulthood, her fateful meeting with Louis Leakey, her romantic involvements and disappointments, her first contacts with the gorillas and the years of her work and struggle are portrayed with humanity and affection.The tale is enormously enriched by her own words.She struggled indomitably against self-serving African bureaucrats, indigenous herdsmen and hunter-gatherers, antagonistic forces that gained strength against her in the fields of primatology and philanthropy, and her own gradually deteriorating health largely the result of a powerful smoking addiction.

But her work and her happiness were plagued by male academics and agents of philanthropic organizations who got caught up in a web of calumny and distrust motivated by primatologists who were seriously bent out of shape by her abrasiveness and who felt they could avenge themselves by vilifying her, possibly abetted by society's undercurrent of misogyny.Had there been no vilification, she may never have been killed, as her fatal enemy, probably an African, no doubt took strength from knowing how much she was hated by, for example, the American and European agents of the Mountain Gorilla Project.Mowat provides the reader a chilling view of Fossey's victimization, but never identifies the sexist element which seems apparent to this male reviewer.

Fossey survived all the victimization because of her extraordinary strength and a powerfully motivating love for the gorillas and the entire eden-like natural world in which she lived.She had serious blind spots:her obliviousness to her abrasiveness, her hatred for the National Park's Tutsi herders and pygmy hunter-gatherers, even before the latter began killing her beloved gorillas (whole gorilla family groups, in order to capture a single infant for the zoo trade and skulls for the tourist souvenir trade), and her (and Mowat's) use of the racist epithet "wog" with impunity toward Africans who she hated, though she shared genuine bonds of love with the Africans who worked with her as trackers and poaching patrollers, and evidenced no other racist feeling.Mowat's record of Fossey's life is a powerful, shocking, revealing and loving account.

A wonderful written book
Farley Mowat performed an excellent service when he wrote thisbook. Dian Fossey was a woman of great character, confidence,courage,determination, and conviction.Her life was lived forwhat she found tobe a greater cause and the world is that muchworse off without her. Thisbook did an excellent job of showing the reader who Dian Fossey really wasand what she really went through.I recommend it to anyone.It is wellworth reading.

I fell in love with this book!
Read this book, and you will feel like you know the real Dian Fossey. Personal letters, journal entries all give insight to her life as a living, breathing human being who had many friends (human and non-human). Herpassion for life is inspirational! This is a must read, and also anexcellent book to read for school projects!

Wonderful!!
This Book contains the interisting life of Dian Fossey from her bith to her dearh ... Read more

Product Description
True tale of author's adventures with family of wolves in Canadian wilderness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

My favorite book as a young boy
I used to know this book by heart. It was my favorite when I was young. Can't wait to read it again after about 40 years.

A great book for teen boys
This was one of the first books I loved when I was a teen, because it featured plenty of outdoor drama, teens in difficult situations surviving without the help of adults, and an unlikely but close friendship between two boys.

I reread it as an adult, and it is a simple book with a simple plot, but for relatively new readers it is perfect.Particularly for young boys who are starting to feel like they don't need their parents anymore.It was the book that launched a lasting love for reading.

Repressed memories
Yeah, I read this a long time ago too, and repressed the horror, the horror of this story.It's a thin gruel of hippie apostasy and neomaxiezoondweebie commie claptrap.Two thin, fit young men rolling around in the lichen and killing stuff--it's unseemly.

A Great Story
This is a great little book! I read it the first time more than 30 years ago and still think of it often. Every youngster should read this book! ... Read more

Product Description
Paul Watson has rammed fishing trawlers; smashed whaling ships; sailed boldly into Soviet waters; and brazenly challenged the government of all seafaring nations to live up to the letter of the laws they have agreed to and signed. Ocean Warrior is Paul Watson's own story--an amazing chronicle of courageous acts in support of deeply held convictions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

amazing!
This book will make you laugh and cry all at once.Paul is a great writer and has packed more adventure into his life that all the Star Trek episodes put together.Time after time as you read you are sure he is done for this time, will be dead or in jail, but time after time he miraculously prevails in his Pirate Vikinq quest to save the whales.

READ THIS BOOK!
One of the best books I have ever read!Without any question.Watson will make you laugh, cry, and most of all, get up and take action. He is one of the few humans I admire.For the most part I am so disgusted with my species I am ashamed to belong to the human race.Capt'n Watson and his crew are amoung the few souls I have any respect for.He is a true Mahatma.READ THIS BOOK!
I was taught humans are neither demons nor angels but occupy the spectrum in between.Well far too many of us gravitate towards one end of the spectrum don't we?And that's why our homeworld has become the cesspool that it is.If we make it out of this mess, it will be because of people like Watson.

Watson is a criminal
Watson wasn't enforcing international law, there was no international LAW against the "crimes" he claims whalers committed.He has stated elsewhere that he has authority to "enforce" this law from a [non binding] UN resolution that was issued many months AFTER he started sinking ships.
This is a self aggrandizing piece of droll from a common criminal.He gives a bad name to a good cause.
I'm very glad I had someone else's copy and I didn't spend my money on it.

We need many more like him.
I worked and sailed with Captain Watson for more than three years.You may not like the what he does or how he writes, but that doesn't matter one bit to him!His only concern is for those animals and ecosystems that he is fighting so hard to protect.He is an gifted leader and speaker, one of the world's most successful activists (if you count results rather than media attention), and has been an inspiration to and mentor of many others that fight for environmental justice.

Read this book, try to soak up some of his message and his passion - then do something with it.

Eco-terrorists of the world unite!!!!!
Paul Watson is one of the few hominids on this planet who actually knows what he's doing with his life.Over the last two hundred years humanity's impact upon Gaia has become exponential.Only people with his courage,compassion and vision offer us any hope."Whether 'tis better in themind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take armsagainst a sea of troubles and by opposing end them"-Shakespeare ... Read more