Product Description

Thor Heyerdahl is one of the greatest explorers of our day. At the age of 84 he has chosen to take a journey through his memories. This is not a chronological autobiography but rather an epic exploration of the world and the amazing events that Heyerdahl has pioneered, participated in and observed. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ADAM is an account of life where personal experiences of a dramatic and emotional nature - secret missions during the war and near-fatal accidents - are woven together with his views on religious fatih politics and ecology. It is a book that focuses on the author's own remarkable life, and also brings us back to the dawn of civilization and out into the future. Thor Heyerdahl has spent a long lifetime wandering in the footsteps of mankind. He invites the reader to participate in that journey by sharing generously the details of his private and public life, his accumulated wisdom, and his friendships with a wide range of influential world leaders such as Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #444967 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-04
• Original language: Norwegian
• Binding: Paperback
• 346 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
To those of us brought up on the heroics of the Kon-Tiki and Ra expeditions, Thor Heyerdahl had the mystique of a Norse god. Long before every two-bit adventurer, with one eye on a television film and the other on a book contract, headed for ever remoter areas of the globe, Heyerdahl captivated us with his daring blend of science and history in action. In Kon-Tiki, a craft made out of balsa, he sailed across the Pacific to Polynesia to prove that there could have been early contact between the two civilisations. Similarly, 22 years later, in 1969, he sailed the Atlantic in a papyrus boat to show that the Ancient Egyptians could have made it to America.

It is, therefore, somewhat disconcerting to find Heyerdahl alternately musing whimsically about God, the Universe and everything like some latter-day Laurens Van Der Post and heavy-handedly underlining his green credentials with references to how he was worried about the ozone level at the year dot. Get on with the story, you scream to yourself. Fortunately, once you are about 40 pages in, the gravitas is gradually dropped but the narrative only really kicks into life with Heyerdahl's descriptions of active service in Britain and Scandinavia during the Second World War. As might be expected, the highlights are the two major expeditions, though Heyerdahl seems more interested in having a go at the detractors who have rubbished his findings, than reliving the journeys themselves.

Heyerdahl is now in his 80s and you can't help feeling that at such an age memory competes with the desire to rewrite history to create a fitting memorial to one's own life. So the latter pages of the book are taken up with his role on various governmental and UN quangos, while his home life is reduced to rose-tinted caricature. His three marriages slide easily into one another with little sense of recrimination or regret, while the premature death of his daughter is almost entirely airbrushed away. In the Footsteps of Adam is by no means a bad book, and there is much of interest, but while we get to hear a lot about the mission, the man himself is only partly revealed. However, perhaps it's the prerogative of Nordic deities to remain a mystery. --John Crace

Review
'Completely beguiling- unconventional...utterly charming. It conveys faithfully Heyerdahl's continuing sense of wonder, his appreciation of so-called primitive cultures, his suspicion of Western civilisation and his conviction that people should work with nature rather than against it... captivating.' MAIL ON SUNDAY '[A] compendium of adventure, history and philosophy by a man who knows arguably as much about the planet as anyone alive' SCOTSMAN 'Thor Heyerdahl had the mystique of a Norse god. Long before every two-bit adventurer, with one eye on a television film and the other on a book contract, headed for ever remoter areas of the globe, Heyerdahl captivated us with his daring blend of science and history in action. In Kon-Tiki, a craft made out of balsa, he sailed across the Pacific to Polynesia to prove that there could have been early contact between the two civilisations. Similarly, 22 years later, in 1969, he sailed the Atlantic in a papyrus boat to show that the Ancient Egyptians could have made it to America. It is, therefore, somewhat disconcerting to find Heyerdahl alternately musing whimsically about God, the Universe and everything like some latter-day Laurens Van Der Post and heavy-handedly underlining his green credentials with references to how he was worried about the ozone level at the year dot. Get on with the story, you scream to yourself. Fortunately, once you are about 40 pages in, the gravitas is gradually dropped but the narrative only really kicks into life with Heyerdahl's descriptions of active service in Britain and Scandinavia during the Second World War. As might be expected, the highlights are the two major expeditions, though Heyerdahl seems more interested in having a go at the detractors who have rubbished his findings, than reliving the journeys themselves. Heyerdahl is now in his 80s and you can't help feeling that at such an age memory competes with the desire to rewrite history to create a fitting memorial to one's own life. So the latter pages of the book are taken up with his role on various governmental and UN quangos, while his home life is reduced to rose-tinted caricature. His three marriages slide easily into one another with little sense of recrimination or regret, while the premature death of his daughter is almost entirely airbrushed away. In the Footsteps of Adam is by no means a bad book, and there is much of interest, but while we get to hear a lot about the mission, the man himself is only partly revealed. However, perhaps it's the prerogative of Nordic deities to remain a mystery.' - John Crace, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

Mail On Sunday
'Conveys faithfully Heyerdahl's continuing sense of wonder, his appreciation of so called primitive cultures...'

Customer Reviews

Nature's balance.
The fact that Thor Heyerdahl, Ph.D., has amassed so much evidence and proved that people have been in regular contact across the oceans for so much longer than was previously thought, and continues to write classics to carry on the theme of contact and communication among diverse peoples and regions seems to be more than some of his detractors can endure. In The Footsteps of Adam, the discovery of our roots in each other's lands is connected with the quest for liberty in nature's balance. The more people who are capable of being inspired by this message the more likely it is that the earth will remain a natural habitat for the human race: I vote five stars. The importance of clearly coordinating many different themes, and the obstacles involved, are difficult to underestimate. And right after Dr. Heyerdahl's other recent book, "Let the Conquered Speak : The Many Discoveries of America."

Adam would be Proud
This man Thor HYERDAHL has been my hero since Kon TIki. He thinks and does it and gets supposed learned one`s quivering with anger.
This book is a short discusion on all his quests with snippets of information wanting you to search out his books to gain more knowledge of the man.
I can highly recomend this to any one who loves real life adventure written by a man who has experienced it all.

Get it and read it.
Maurice.