Customer Reviews

Hidden Amazon: The Greatest Voyage in Natural History

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In preparation for a trip to the Peru Amazon, I purchased Hidden Amazon. The book has many useful tidbits about the Amazon and the immediate environs, but the writing style is so juvenile as to be off-putting. The shameless touting of one tour company grows old fast and one starts to wonder why one paid full price for a sales promotion. The photos are excellent, but not one has a description.

There must be better books about this area. I recommend you keep looking

As someone who has been to the Amazon many times, I found this book by Dick Lutz to be accurate in its historical content, natural history data and cultural information. The book is based on an "eco-tourism" experience and thus gives the reader a first-hand look into the programming and practices of tour companies that work to conserve natural resources by creating local economic incentives for the preservation of wildlife habitats as "attractions" to international travelers. I would recommend this book to people who desire to travel to remote a natural habitat such as the Amazon, to learn as much as they can while there and to minimize their impact on the local environment. Hidden Amazon contains a section with color pictures, too, which includes shots by wildlife photographer extraordinaire-- Mason Fischer.

Most of us know something about the Brazilian Amazon. There is a lot to learn about the Peruvian Amazon, a wholly different environment. This book is another of Dick Lutz's natural history travelogues that mix his experiences on tours with abundant information about the natural and human history of the area he's touring.

It's hard to tell if these are pure books about the author's experience or a literary embellishment of the tour company's promotional material and Guidebook for Tour Guides. Readers will learn about the expedition on the tour company's boat-a journal about Our Experiences for the Folks Back Home-and the natural history of this precious rain forest environment. It's a combination of postcards to those who couldn't make the trip and a good high school course or college course in applied biology.

This book contains some pictures, with credits to the author's wife and to the tour company, but no explanations of what the pictures are. One gets the feeling of looking at a hastily-assembled scrapbook. If you're interested in what a tour of the Peruvian Amazon might be like, you'll gain some insights from this work.

If you plan to travel on one of the FLOTELS that operate out of Iquitos, this book will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. It recounts much of what the guides will explain to you on your tour, and has some details of the Author's particular tour.

There are a bunch of factual errors in the book, which is annoying but not damning. I was hoping for a more detailed description of the experience from a more experienced writer. Instead it is a light treatment of the journey.

Well enough written and generally OK.

This book is really two books in one. The first is a running narrative of two tours you can take of this area of the Amazon from International Expeditions; the other is book of facts about the location. The narrative keeps up a human interest while the facts fill in the gaps.

The technique works very well. For a short book of 155 pages it seems to have 400 pages of facts and new information. If you were not familiar with this area, it would be hard to find a book that reveals as much information per page as this one. This is what I wanted: to learn as much as possible as quick as possible while keeping the information interesting and within a meaningful context.

I would have liked more information on the actual food provided on the tour, more pictures, and captions of what the pictures are (an editing must). A few pictures of the inside of the boat would have been nice, too. The writing is excellent and the marginal quotes add additional reading pleasure and insights. Lutz is a very good writer. This is a fast moving, easy to read, book.

This book was totally uninspiring. If I had read the book before I signed up for the trip it chronicled, I would not be going to the Amazon. It should be removed from the IE list of recommended books!

("The Hidden Amazon" follows Jeff Bezos from his early years, when he was found and raised by a small herd of boa constrictors, up through the present day, a time when he reveals his whole world--a world of books and more--through his quietly revolutionary website. This is a fascinating read for aspiring entrepreneurs. But shhhhh . . . if word gets out of this secret world, this "amazon.com," it could ruin the magic.)