Customer Reviews

Islands: Portraits of Miniature Worlds

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

 

 

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.

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