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List Price: $19.00Amazon.com's Price: $17.10 You Save: $1.90 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.9142
EAN: 9780345435101
ISBN: 0345435109
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: January 02, 2002
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: January 02, 2002
Sales Rank: 299515
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
“DELIGHTFUL . . . INQUISITIVE AND INTELLIGENT, THIS BOOK WILL TAKE YOU FAR AND OPEN YOUR EYES.”
–The Seattle Times
In a penetrating, brilliantly written book that weaves sociology, history, politics, personality, and ancient and popular culture into one compelling narrative, Thurston Clarke island-hops around the oceans of the world, searching for an explanation for the most enduring geographic love affair of all time–between humankind and islands. Along the way Clarke visits the remote and silent Mas À Tierra, the island off the coast of Chile that inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe; sleepy, simple Campobello, the Canadian island where Franklin D. Roosevelt spent his boyhood summers; Jura in the Hebrides, where George Orwell wrote 1984. A stunning work of wit, adventure, and incisive exploration, Searching for Paradise brings a unique passion to dazzling life.
“This enchanting hymn to our ceaseless fascination for islands and insularity is brilliant, quite without equal. Thurston Clarke’s wisdom and sensitivity radiate from every page: he fills us with an inexplicable longing for the land and the people glimpsed above the cliff top, and through the grasses beyond the beach.”
–SIMON WINCHESTER
Author of The Professor and the Madman
“An intelligent, passionate, absorbing book that manages to pull together the threads of history, myth, travelogue, personal reflection, and social commentary into a delightful narrative.”
–Toronto Globe and Mail
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - An overall good read if you're fascinated by small dots on a map
'Searching for Crusoe' aka 'Searching for Paradise' is an account of visits to thirteen islands scattered over the globe. These islands have been selected for representing one of the aspects that make any small island appealing, such as being famous, infamous, holy, personal, friendly or even frightening. The chapters mainly deal with the history of the islands and the people living on it.
Each chapter is pretty balanced, on average the stories are not too shallow, not too romantic, ... Read More
Rating:  - A wonderful tour of many fascinating islands
_Searching for Paradise_ by Thurston Clarke was a wonderful, well-written, witty book touring many of the world's islands, from the arctic island of Svalbard to sunny South Pacific islands like Abemama and a number of islands in between. I found the book a good mixture of history and travelogue and loved the author's descriptions of the sites, architecture, and in many cases fauna and flora of the places he visited as well as interviews with those who lived there.
Daniel Defoe's _Robinson ... Read More
Rating: - A rich and fascinating trip
One might think that Thurston Clarke is compiling his travel books by geographical feature, first a book on the equator and now one on islands. We might expect his next to be about the Tropic of Cancer or salt marshes. Whatever it is, I suspect it will be a worthy and fascinating concoction.
While he writes this book from the perspective of what he calls a "islomane", one who fascinated with islands, it makes compelling reading for someone who lacks this particular fascination. As a prairie ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.9142
EAN: 9780345435101
ISBN: 0345435109
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: January 02, 2002
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: January 02, 2002
Sales Rank: 299515
Studio: Ballantine Books