Author Description

A very young Thor Heyerdahl sets out with his new wife for paradise - a natural and unspoiled world that they sought and, to a degree, found in the South Pacific. It was the first of many journeys that would lead to expeditions and explorations, to a vocation, to the testing of theories against the currents of oceans and history, to books that would include Kon-Tiki, Aku-Aku, and Easter Island, and would bring him worldwide fame and renown. This warm, spirited, amusing memoir of Heyerdahl's youth is the key to his future life. We see the early emergence of certain of his basic ideas and beliefs: that ancient man, previously believed to he primitive and confined by the oceans, knew more and traveled farther than had been suspected; that the natural world was even then endangered and was well worth preserving; that individuals and peoples could live peacefully together, find common problems and uncommon joys. This is a love story, an adventure story, a documentary based on journals the young Thor kept at the time, and a prophet's brief but unrestrained, unabashed sermon-polemic on why the seas, like the cities, should no longer be unthinkingly polluted in the pursuit of profits, and why the contempt for nature is as much a crime against the planet as a capital offense against humanity.