Last Chance to See

How can a book be so grim and sad but still be laugh-out-loud funny? Such was the genius of Douglas Adams. With zoologist Mark Carwardine, Adams travels the world to spot endangered animals for a BBC radio program. Amidst the hilarious travel stories and sly jabs at human behavior runs the tragic thread of how stupidly short-sighted people are when they don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone.

Douglas Adams was, of course, the famous humorous science fiction writer. Last Chance to See is one of his lesser known works though really deserves much more recognition. Adams teams up with biologist Mark Carwardine to travel to different parts of the planet in search of endangered species - see find them before they go extinct.

This book was remarkably bittersweet. It is slyly funny, with Adams' characteristic ability to wring humor from circumstance, whether it was about snake anti-venom, trying to find condoms to create a makeshift underwater microphone, or the author's nervousness about China. I smiled and laughed reading his and Carwardine (and the revolving BBC audio tech who ended up on their trips)'s adventures. At the same show more time, the book was incredibly sad because I was keenly aware that since its publications, we have lost at least one of species that Adams and Carwardine looked for, the Baiji aka the Yangtze River Dolphin which, if not actually extinct, is at least functionally extinct. I fear that other species mentioned in the book may soon follow.

Still, Adams doesn't preach or lecture. He instead entertains and through that entertainment creates teachable moments. I am incredibly impressed that throughout the book, he never lapsed into soapboxing about the need to protect any of the species, but instead lays out the uphill battle that those working on those species face and that these handful of species mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg.

A very short but powerful book that made me think Adams was wasted on science fiction, and that he should have really done more science writing or travelogues. Here is where he really shines. show less

This wildlife conservation travelogue is the result of BBC's asking Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine to travel around the world in search of endangered creatures. If you have an interest in conservation, this should already be on your list, but if you don't, this should really be on your list, not only because we should all be interested in life here on our earth but because Douglas Adams is one of the funniest people ever to have walked on its surface. You'd think talking about dying species would be dry and sad, but I think Adams could make an obituary a good laugh and it is to his credit that he never lets the humor outshine the actual topic and his accolades of the people who struggle every day to keep species alive for show more coming generations is always more than apt. I wish the book had more photos, but that's a small complaint and there are plenty available from other sources. show less

A fun and insightful read, and I suspect for all that not a book to win new readers. Either you pick it up as a Douglas Adams fan, or as someone interested in getting a boots-on-the-ground peek into specific efforts involving endangered species. Possibly both. For either sort, Adams provides not merely a journeyman's account but an enjoyable tutorial. It reads as though he wrote it that way, too: Don't let the book get in the way of the task, as it were, focus on getting the story right more than publishing his next bestseller.

Adams's tone and narrative voice are key to this achievement. His first couple chapters suggest something recognisably conversational as if from Hitchhiker, though with fewer tangents and less bizarre flights of show more fancy. A sound decision as there is plenty of the bizarre embedded in the environmental stories he tells. Adams avoids veering into the overly comic, something I'd expect of Dave Barry. Adams, on the contrary, modulates his tone to capture the pathos of his story, a dimension only tangentially evident in Hitchhikers'.

The stories here aren't terribly complex, their challenge is becoming better known. Adams helps address this simply by agreeing to make the trip and write it up: his celebrity, presumably, will help spread the word. show less

Nobody writes like Douglas Adams writes. He's one of the few guys that can have me laughing uproariously while also pondering something deep and important. Or pondering the sad legacy of humans while laughing. Or shaking my head at the sheer stupidity of humans.

That being said, while there are many funny moments in this book, overall, it's heartbreaking book to read. In anyone else's hands, I believe it would have been pleadingly maudlin.

With Adams, instead, it's hopeful.

Nobody writes like Douglas Adams writes. I miss him.

So, shortly after Dirk Gently's second novel, Douglas Adams takes off across the world with a zoologist and, together with a ton of misadventures and great photographs, they meet dragons, tough-skinned 17-month gestating aliens, birds that have forgotten how to forget how to hit the ground, and we learn that DNA has a major *issue* with aftershave.

Multiple aftershaves. *shudder*

Back in the day, I saw this book in the bookstores and I said to myself... "Hey! Buddy! Where's the next fiction novel? I mean, sure, raising awareness for animals that are on the way to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe IS a good cause, but I WANT MY FICTION."

And so I took thirty years to get around to reading this.

I feel slightly bad. This is a show more shame-read. The book has shamed me on many levels while making me laugh.

Well! At least there's that! show less

Thirty‑plus years ago Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame and Mark Carwardine, a wildlife zoologist and photographer, set out to find some of the rarest creatures on earth before it was too late and document their encounters with them. This book is a result of that expedition. There are touches of the absurd humor and satire in it that Adams was well known for but what stands out is his insightful commentary about the reasons the creatures became endangered in the first place. I had planned to follow this up with Stephen Fry’s 2009 book, Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams but now I’m going to wait because I know it will suffer in comparison.