Last Chance to See Audio, Cassette – Abridged, Audiobook Author: Visit Amazon's Douglas Adams Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0679401938 | Format: EPUB
Last Chance to See Audio, Cassette – Abridged, Audiobook Description
From School Library Journal
YA-- The BBC asked this team to film some of the most endangered animal species throughout the world. Adams has recorded their adventures seeking the komodo dragon, northern white rhinoceros, mountain gorilla, kakapo, baiji dolphin, and the rodrigues fruit bat. There is biological information here, but it is inaccessible for report writers due to the lack of an index and the wordy descriptions. However, these same accurate portrayals and Adams's entertaining style will expose students to the worlds of these animals. He moves rapidly from informal, laugh-out-loud descriptions of his travels to serious pleas for awareness and conservation of all animals. The full-color photographs are in two separate sections and help readers to visualize the unusual animals (including the authors).
- Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VACopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“Descriptive writing of a high order . . . this is an extremely intelligent book.”
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The Times“This is life or death stuff, but Adams is a writer who chooses not to shake his finger at the reader.”
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Los Angeles Times“Who would have thought that a book in the field of “ecology/nature”…could be as lively, sharply satirical, brilliantly written and even funny as this one is?…ranks with the best set pieces in Mark Twain.”
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Atlantic Monthly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Audio Cassette
- Publisher: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (February 20, 1991)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679401938
- ISBN-13: 978-0679401933
- Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 4.8 x 7.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
Douglas Adams' sense of humour is so strong, it could inject a bucketful of laughs into an obituary. Needless to say I wasn't surprised when this book, his elegy for endangered species, turned out to have a welcome balance between laughter and melancholy.
Adams is joined by zoologist Mark Carwardine, as they use their last chance to see a variety of animals on the brink of extinction, such as the Komodo Dragon, the White Rhinos of Zaire, New Zealand kakapos, and Yangtze river dolphins. Adams, amateur wildlife lover, is wise enough to know the purpose of his journey: to shine some of the glare from his celebrity as a "science-fiction comedy novelist" on the issue of global extinction. He does wisely not to downplay the plight of these animals in the favour of commerciality, but manages to produce an entertaining work nonetheless. Carwardine, and the other people we encounter, sometimes come off as little more than characters in a Douglas Adams novel. I am hesitant to believe that everyone he encounters has the same dry, deadpanned British sense of humour. Nonetheless, the characters' eccentricities further shed light on the kinds of people who are willing to undertake the monumental task of saving these beautiful beasts. It is not work for the dispassionate.
"The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong," he notes at one point, "is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along." Which brings up the second theme he hopes to illustrate here. Humans are dumb. No, that's too simple. Humans are egotistical, selfish, wasteful, materialistic, impudent, and dumb.
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