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| Last Chance to See | 
| Authors: Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $2.69
You Save: $12.26 (82%)
New (40) from $6.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  175 reviews
Sales Rank: 16188
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0345371984
Dewey Decimal Number: 591.529
EAN: 9780345371980
ASIN: 0345371984
Publication Date: October 13, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some wear
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| Customer Reviews:
 What a great book! January 6, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book ended up being one of my favorite books! I was already a Douglas Adams fan going into it, so I was ready for a well-written and funny book. Not only was it hilarious at times, it was also very informative. It really opens your eyes to how desperate times are getting to saving these endangered species and how crucial every form of life is to this world.
If you love animals or are a Douglas Adams fan (or just like to read even), then you'll love this book.
Through Adam's eyes December 27, 2005
Some people may be shocked and slightly confused to hear this, but Douglas Adams' series about hitchiking the galaxy are not about that at all, but about the absurdities of the world around us, seen from the unique perspective of a fantastic narrator. In the same way, this fabulous book, Last chance to see, is not just any ordinary book about endangered species.
I'm an environmental science major and as such have a massive textbook not 3 feet from me right now which I could open and read bland paragraph after bland paragraph of much more useful information than Last chance to see could give me. And yet I choose to read Last Chance to see, simply because any part of the world seen through Adams' eyes is bound to give even the foremost scholar on that subject a radically new, radically funny, and radically compassionate feel for something that they thought they knew everything about already. It saddens me every time I rememeber that that window to the world has been closed forever, never to be regained, much like the very animals he describes.
I've been an environmentalist and and an Adams' fan separately for years, and seeing one passion through the lense of the other makes me incredibly happy, so happy I could fly. I just hope I remember to miss the ground.
Classic Douglas Adams. Need I say more? November 28, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you're one of those who don't care about the Earth we share, then pass this book by. Otherwise, you owe it to yourself to be guided by a great humorist, who doesn't forget that it's important to laugh even when faced with the most improbable tasks in conservation. Sometimes, that's all we can do.
A most thought-provoking, touching reminder of the fragile Earth.
This is what Non-Fiction should be... October 25, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If you're NOT a Douglas Adams fan, read LAST CHANCE TO SEE, because you'll become one at the end of it.
If you're NOT a nature-lover, read LAST CHANCE TO SEE, because you'll become one at the end of it.
If you're a Douglas Adams fan, and haven't read LAST CHANCE TO SEE, read it NOW.
If you're a nature-lover, and haven't read LAST CHANCE TO SEE, read it NOW.
If you're BOTH a Douglas Adams fan and a nature-lover, and haven't read LAST CHANCE TO SEE, drown yourself in a well.
LAST CHANCE TO SEE is an account of Douglas Adams's expedition in search of endangered species, which he undertook with zoologist Mark Carwardine, at BBC's urging.
And oh, it is also the book Douglas Adams was most proud of.
And also the one I'm most proud of having read.
Adams managed to fulfill his purpose behind the book, which is to create awareness among us humans that we're not alone on this planet, and even though we're the third most intelligent species (behind mice and dolphins, obviously), it doesn't mean the rest are bunk.
But that's not all Adams did. He made a non-fiction book, which by some other author might have been a tad boring, refreshing to read. He mixed an apt proportion of his trademark humour into the facts he has put forth. Some of the quotes, as with his other books, will live on forever.
As soon as I finished reading the book the first time (six re-reads in four months since I found it, by the way), it hit me: The person who wrote this is no more, there won't ever be a similar book, not by him. And there was a tear in the eye...
A Hitchhiker's Guide to Zoology October 14, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Last Chance to See" is Douglas Adams' hilarious and though-provoking non-fiction, eco-travel narrative about circling the globe in search of some of the Earth's most endangered animals. We get to see a side of Adams that is deeply concerned with the plight of the beautiful, unique, and often ludicrously implausible lifeforms on our planet -- the same side that prompted him to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit.
What made this book all the more meaningful to me was that I'd thought I'd finished all of Douglas Adams' books long ago. I loved them all, but I never fully appreciated the depth of his genius as a humanist and social satirist until, sadly, he had passed away. What's more, I never realized how much Adams' writings meant to me until I was hit with the cold, hard reality that he'd written all he ever would. Douglas Adams had hitched his last ride across the galaxy, and I'd never hear from him again. Or so I thought.
Infinitely improbable as it may seem, I heard from Douglas Adams again about two weeks ago. I was browsing around in Borders, long since resigned to the fact that I'd read the last "new" Douglas Adams book I ever would, when I stumbled upon "Last Chance to See." I felt like I'd gone into the pet store to buy a parakeet and, instead, found a dodo bird.
The endangered species Douglas Adams criss-crossed the globe in search of are all, in their own ways, remarkable and priceless. He urges us not to wait until they're gone to fully appreciate them, and he drives this point home to today's readers, in his own ironic style, by now being himself "extinct."
If you're a Douglas Adams fan, and you've never read this book, here it is -- your own "last chance to see" (or, rather, read) him. His own voice, his own words, his own experiences. For me, it was a fond farewell from an old friend I'd never met, who, from his new home -- far beyond life, the universe, and everything -- telling me, "Yes, I'm dead. But there are still a few rhinos and gorillas and dolphins that aren't. Do me a favor; make sure they stay that way."
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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