Islands: Portraits of Miniature Worlds [Hardcover]

Louise B. Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

Islands is a series of beautifully written and illustrated essays that explore some of the most fascinating of these isolated landscapes, particularly those whose stories address the delicate balance that exists between the land, the people, and other living beings. An environmentalist and geophysicist, Louise Young describes the unique history and personality of each island -- its birth and evolution, geological makeup, flora and fauna, and human inhabitants.

From the volcanic origins of Sri Lanka's spectacular jewel mines and the remarkable plant and animal life of Madagascar to the mysterious statues on Easter Island and the earth-splitting geology of Iceland, Islands takes readers on a breathtaking journey to some of the smallest -- yet most impressive -- places on the planet.

The stories behind these miniature worlds are as varied as their exotic landscapes -- some are tragic, others are hopeful, but they all reveal important messages about preserving ecological balance and the consequences of how we exploit or nurture the larger island of Earth itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Louise Young, a geophysical scientist, is a lover of islands. Faced with a life-threatening illness 35 years ago, she vowed to throw herself into far-flung travels, to collect exotic places that still "retain a distinctive personality or whose story illuminates a significant aspect of man's relationship with nature."

The fruit of those travels is this fine book of essays, part memoir, part travelogue, part natural-history commentary. Young opens with an overview of island geography, noting the ways in which islands form in geological time and how the mere fact of isolation has both spawned wondrous life forms and inflicted "the unfavorable results of genetic inbreeding," one of the factors responsible for species extinction. She travels to places such as Easter Island, a study in what happens when humans too vigorously disturb ecological balances, in this case through deforestation that resulted in soil erosion and changed climatic conditions; the gold- and spice-rich islands of Indonesia; Mauritius and the Seychelles, the former habitat of the unfortunate dodo and fabulously rare sea coconut tree, which produces the heaviest seeds of any plant in the world; and the Bahamas. Her book, a must for fellow island lovers, closes with a careful examination of the myth of Atlantis, and with a call for humans to be more watchful of sensitive ecosystems everywhere on island Earth. --Gregory McNamee

From Scientific American

Young's verbal portraits are handsomely framed by apt quotations from the likes of Shakespeare, Browning and Ovid as chapter headings and by elegant drawings of island fauna and phenomena by Jennifer Dewey. "The remoteness of islands surrounds them with a certain mystery," environmentalist and geophysicist Young says, "and their isolation is responsible for their individual characteristics and evolutionary history." She portrays vividly the characteristics and the evolutionary history of 12 islands or island groups--among them the Hawaiian archipelago, the Galápagos, Easter Island and Madagascar--and also treats Earth itself as "an island in the universe."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company; 1 edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716731355
• ISBN-13: 978-0716731351
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,064,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother, July 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Islands: Portraits of Miniature Worlds (Hardcover)

Actually, 1.5 stars is probably more appropriate because (a) the book does contain some interesting natural history factoids and (b) it is not as bad as "Paradise for Sale", another recent book about Islands.

The book consists of a series of travelogues full of the author's random observations about a number of islands: Iceland, Bermuda, Crete, Bali, Lombok, Madagascar, etc. As a clue to where the book is headed, the last chapter is about "earth". Yes, as you might guess from that fact, a principal theme is all the terrible things people (western people, mainly) are doing to the earth, as is evidenced by developments in individual island communities.

As mentioned above, there is some interesting canned natural history type information interspersed throughout the book, but there is very little structure - mostly whatever happened to strike the author at the time of her visit, or whatever random information she had about the destination that she assumes readers will not have. The chapter on iceland swings between recent volcanic activity and the fact that there used to be european colonies in Greenland and Leif Erikson discovered North America (i.e., rather than Columbus or the people who already lived there).

Her observations about the societies in the islands she visits are worthless and are almost a parody of well meaning but condescending and clueless western intellectual attitudes to non-western societies. One island has experienced improved economic development "because women have entered the work force and been freed of never ending childbirth and virtual slavery at home". As with most of this book, this is an unsupported assertion. Then, in Sri Lanka she is pleased by the sight of women laboring in the tea plantations "in their brightly colored sari", while the men do the "fun" jobs of fishing and digging for valuable stones (covered in mud in deep pits; sounds like fun, hey guys?). Bali and Lombok have happy, multicultural societies (laughable, given recent events in Indonesia). Ancient Minoan aristocrats led elegant lives, wore nice clothes and lived in nice houses (this is far enough in the past that the slavery, etc. part of that culture gets filtered out). Some statements are just plain idiotic: the people of Bali live "pleasant and enjoyable lives" - is the author giving up her culture to join them? I bet many of them would gladly trade places with her. "Simple devices made of aluminum foil can be used to cook food using sunlight instead of cutting down trees for wood". Is the author using this device every day at home? At night? On rainy days?

Even the environmental analysis is spotty and judgment-laden: slash and burn agriculture by substinence farmers is bad, land that has been cleared for tea plantations in Sri Lanka or terraced for mono-culture rice farming in Bali seems okay because they make the scenery pretty. Animals which float to islands on natural rafts in storms and adapt to the new environment are okay, but dogs brought by westerners and adapt by wiping out indigent species are bad.

The ironic thing is that in one of the last chapters about coral atolls, she notes that coral is already growing around the sunken ships in the Bikini atoll despite the area having been NUKED repeatedly. So much for the rest of her statements about all the terrible things western culture is supposedly doing to the "fragile" environment.

In closing she states that the earth is an island and "time is running out". Typical apocolyptic environmentalism by someone who clearly needs to believe that events she witnesses during her life time, and therefor her participation are somehow more significant than any other period of time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating review of islands, December 7, 2000

By 

S. Amos (Clementon, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islands: Portraits of Miniature Worlds (Hardcover)

The book gives a great overview of a variety of islands, their habitats and wildlife, and the challenges facing them.