Living With Cannibals And Other Womens Adventures [Hardcover]

Michele Slung (Author)

Book Description

Series: Adventure Press | Publication Date: July 1, 2000

Drawn from more than one hundred years of first-person narratives from the collection of the National Geographic Society, a collection of firsthand accounts documents the accomplishments of women explorers who ventured into the unknown, featuring contributions from astronaut Shannon Lucid, arctic e

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The single most important discovery for women explorers may be the freedom that lies at the very act of exploration." It is fitting that the daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh pens the introduction to a collection that pays tribute to women adventurers from the 18th to the 21st centuries. In her foreword, Reeve Lindbergh reveals the intrinsic yearnings that unite the early female adventurers with their contemporary counterparts: the thrill of breaking new ground and the relief inherent in escaping restrictive societal boundaries.

Liberated from the dusty shelves of the National Geographic Society and bound in a slim, portable volume, these 16 snapshots profile daring women from past and present, pairing them according to their wayward desires ("The Call of the Arctic," "Down River," "Where the Air Is Thin"). Helen Thayer's solo trek to the North Pole in 1988 is particularly powerful: "The feel of the wind lashing my body and face without mercy, and a savage hunger and thirst combined to make me dig into a reservoir of strength.... I dug so deep that I came up with reserves I never knew I had."

In some cases, the accounts of the early pioneers are lacking in detail and correspondingly lack the punch of their contemporary counterparts, yet some, like the piece on Louise Arner Boyd, serve to highlight the freedom so treasured by brave independent adventurers:

Far north ... are lands that hold one spellbound. Gigantic imaginary gates with hinges set in the horizon seem to guard these lands. Slowly the gates swing open, and one enters another world where men are insignificant amid the awesome immensity of lonely mountains, fjords, and glaciers.

The adventure connoisseur may be frustrated by the brevity of some portraits as well as the brusqueness with which both tragedy and victory are conveyed. Ultimately, however, Living with Cannibals succeeds in fulfilling a greater purpose--to prop open the door for further explorations into the hearts of the world's most overlooked pioneers. --Daphne Durham

From Publishers Weekly

The idea for this wonderful survey of some now-forgotten female adventurers came from Susan Fifer Canby, the National Geographic Society's librarian, who supplies a charming afterword and a bibliography. Veteran author/editor Slung (Slow Hand, Crime on Her Mind, etc.) was a wise choice to create these brief, tantalizing profiles of 16 women from the last two centuries. She brings life and insight even to familiar subjects like primatologists Dian Fossey and Birut? Galdikas. Some of her subjects are emblematic of scientific progress in certain fields, like pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart, who is paired with Mir astronaut Shannon Lucid. While the more modern women, such as alpinist Catherine Destivelle or Helen Thayer (who trekked to the North Pole with only a husky for help and companionship), accomplish awesome physical feats, the truly fascinating accounts are those of women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, who faced cultural prejudices, went into uncharted territories and often described their travels in exceedingly popular books: California socialite Louise Arner Boyd voyaged to and photographed the Arctic; bourgeois Vienna housewife Ida Pfeiffer lived among headhunters and cannibals; privileged New Englander Fanny Bullock Workman climbed peaks in India in the early 1900s. This small volume will find many fans among readers interested in learning about extraordinary women's lives and will likely whet the appetite for reissues of the pioneers' early books. 40+ b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792276868
• ISBN-13: 978-0792276869
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,358,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Spectacular Adventure!, January 7, 2001

By 

MICHAEL ALLEN MOORE (Hollywood, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living With Cannibals And Other Womens Adventures (Hardcover)

Pairing well known adventuresses with lesser known heroines makes this book a great read for those with various levels of familiarity with the history of women explorers. Delightful anecdotes are coupled with high adventure which kept me saying, "I will just read one more story..." until I found myself half way through the book in one sitting. This is a great book to read to your daughter.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Easy to Identify with the Adventurers, August 24, 2001

By 

RicR2 (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living with Cannibals and Other Women's Adventures (Adventure Press) (Paperback)

The picture on the cover and the title made me think that this was going to be "A short superficial collection of stories about women adventurers," and probably adventures that wouldn't be worth mentioning were the people male. I was pleasantly surprised. Common themes are, "Ms. X from a very early age indicated that she wanted to travel" and "After living a conventional, homemaker life, at age 30+ Ms. X started traveling." The stories are written so that that one can readily identify with the adventurers, perhaps precisely because up until the time they start traveling their lives are so similar to people like me who are not. Like a prior reviewer, once I started the book I was hooked.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overview of adventurous women -- past and present, June 19, 2006

By 

Liz Mckay "Adventure Coach" (Napa, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living with Cannibals and Other Women's Adventures (Adventure Press) (Paperback)

This is a pretty quick read and very enjoyable. What I liked so much about this book is that while all these women have one thing in common -- adventure -- they all have their very own and very different approaches to it. From a single mom who takes her daughter through a foreign country, to women kayakers, to mountain climbers. All these women have found the one or two things they really loved (one lady loved India and also loved riding her bike so she rode her bike through India) and pursued it.

Basically this book teaches you to find your thing, be proud of what it is you like to do as an individual - and go for it.