Customer Reviews

LIFE: The Greatest Adventures of All Time

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

 

 

The stories and photos are both excellent and engrossing, although the essays are needlessly truncated for the modern one minute attention span. This could have benefited greatly from a bit more detail, a bit more fleshing out of the characters and circumstances. Something of a Cliff Notes for recent explorations.

What I and two other people I spoke with found utterly offensive was the forward by Robert Sullivan. This guy literally says there were no "adventurers" before 1900. He discounts everyone from Columbus to Lewis & Clark to Leif Erickson, and his reasoning is wholly specious, as if modern explorers did not have patrons or ulterior motives. Do yourself a favor and skip his naive and offensive ramblings and get right to the lusty tales of the ambitious souls who have bravely expanded our horizons.

This book should never have been called the "Greatest Adventures of All Time" since it's really only the greatest adventures of the last century, but in the end that is sufficient. It was an amazing Century and an amazing time to be alive.

I had purchased this magazine when it first came out, and when I showed it to my adventurous son, he was disappointed when I couldn't let him keep it. So glad I could get another from Amazon, as it was out of print. A compelling book with great pictures...

All the major adventures of the previous century that you really ought to be familiar with! Simply impossible to put down once you've picked it up, this book is required reading. Illustrated with contemporary photographs throughout, most have been seen before and much of what is written and illustrated is to be found elswhere. What you have here, though, is the whole lot - end to end. If this doesn't fill you with awe - nothing will!