Douglas Adams is the best selling author of comedy sci-fi novels such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This book chronicles his travels throughout the world, with zoologist Mark Carwadine, searching for some of the most endangered species on the planet. This unlikely pairing has produced one of the most poignant and significant books ever written on the subject of species facing extinction. The species searched for are often less obvious and "media friendly" than the usual giant pandas, tigers and orang utans. Rodriguez fruit bats, Komodo dragons, aye-aye lemurs and the kakapo (a huge flightless parrot from New Zealand) are some of the animals ...  Read the complete review

'Last Chance to See' (1990 William Heinemann Ltd; 1991 Pan Books Ltd) is Adams' second-most recent book (followed by 'Mostly Harmless', the fifth episode of the Hitchhiker series. A sixth one was also said to be in the pipeline, but that was years ago and nothing has happened yet). To quote, "This isn't at all what I expected. In 1985, by some sort of journalistic accident I was sent to Madagscar with Mark Cawardine to look for an almost extinct lemur called the aye-aye. None of the three of us had met before. I had never met Mark, Mark had never met me, and no-one, apparently, had seen an aye-aye in years. This was the idea of the ...  Read the complete review

Everyone has either heard of or read the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. However, not so many people seem to have heard of Last Chance to see by Doug. I can tell that for two reasons, one it is not listed here and two I bought it in hardback from a cheapo bookshop for a fiver. A fiver well and truly well spent say I! If you’re a fan of Doug’s brand of humour you’ll love this and at the same time get more of an insight into the man himself and most importantly the subject of the book. Endangered species. It starts when our hero is asked by a magazine to visit Madagascar to meet a guy about endangered species (Mark Carwardine, ...  Read the complete review