Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World's Most Remote Places
Over the centuries, exotic, faraway islands have inspired dozens of fanciful literary and cinematic escapades, from Robinson Crusoe to TV’s recent sci-fi series Lost. For the genesis of this captivating travelogue profiling 20 of the world’s most remote islands, author and birding enthusiast Lovegrove credits a blissful week spent at a bird sanctuary on Skokholm Island, near Wales, when he was only 16. Not all the islands chronicled here are quite so idyllic, however, and few have the tropical climate depicted in the Defoe classic. Halfmoon Island, located in the  Arctic Ocean, for example, is “the definition of desolation and soullessness,” according to Lovegrove. Some islands are well known, such as Guam, where the author witnesses the environmental devastation caused by military installations, whereas others are not, such as the lush mid-Atlantic outpost Tristan da Cunha, where a tiny society flourishes despite its extreme distance from the mainland. Together with maps and eight pages of color plates, Lovegrove’s vividly written essays will provide hours of vicarious enjoyment for housebound island hoppers and geography lovers everywhere. --Carl Hays