Daniel Defoe based his famous Robin Crusoe castaway character on the real-life seafaring adventurers of men who were his contemporaries - and who did survive for years on isolated islands after shipwrecks. Tim Severin camped out on islands castaways once survived on, and searched South America for the tribes which were a model for Crusoe's companion Man Friday. In Search Of Robinson Crusoe is highly recommended history blended with adventure and travel in a revealing and thoroughly engaging.

Este libro reune mas de 200 haikus de Benedetti, abordando sus temas clasicos como el pueblo, el amor, las mujeres y el humor, y deja de lado, como aclara en la introducion, los temas clasicos de haikus. Cada haiku tiene 17 silabas y Benedetti se apego a esta regla de la forma mas estricta posible, lo que logra un efecto sonoro muy particular. Cada uno de las paginas con haikus logra llegar a la mente, al fondo de la razon individual, tal como Benedetti ha sabido hacer siempre. Una verdadera joya.

Written like a narrative biography, this popular Defoe tale has been abridged to appeal to younger reader. It is set in the mid-1600s in England, as young Robinson considers his future. His father warns him about the perils of sailing. Robinson, undeterred, finds his way to a ship leaving from London.

Various adventures ensue, including being captured as a slave by a wealthy Turk. When he breaks for his escape, he manages to board a ship with a kind captain who assists him.

The real adventure begins soon thereafter, eight years after he first left home. He is shipwrecked:

"Nothing can describe the panic I felt when I hit the water... I looked up and saw an island before me." That island becomes his home for many years. His only book is his Bible which he reads daily. He makes what he needs from items he finds of the island, and later, meets Friday, whom he saves from death.

The illustration by N. C. Wyeth are beautiful, and have been seen in many earlier editions and versions of "Robinson Crusoe."

Few books hold the charm and swagger that "Robinson Crusoe" does, and lesser still tell it so well. The abridgment retains the excitement, and hopefully, as your child or student grows older, they will want to read the original version.

I fully recommend "Robinson Crusoe," by Daniel Defoe.

Anthony Trendl

This is a great family reading time book. It is the traditional story of Robinson Crusoe with his Christian witness added. It details how his dependance on the Lord sustained him through his trails. Our family greatly enjoyed this book and would enjoy any other books in this series. I would recommend this book to any age.

I saw it in my teachers shelf. I looked at the cover and it looked interesting to me. I read it in the beginning of the year 2003.

Robinson Crusoe was sailing in a violent storm and it destroyed the ship. Next day he built a fort to protect himself from wild animals. In the beginning of the story he is on a island alone. But at the end he meets some indians.
People who like adventure would like this book.

I like this book because Daniel Defoe can grasp your attention within the first two chapters. He had caught mine with Robinson Cruesoe's ways.
Defoe makes his character stand out, and lets you see the relationships in which Cruesoe makes. You feel like you know what Cruesoe is like, after only a few chapters.
The development of this book, and its characters is extraordinary. With Cruesoe, throughout the book, you see his tenacity, and how he just won't quit, he won't let go of survival. You also see how Cruesoe's friend can learn English, and understands so he can communicate.
The action in which Robinson goes through is incredible. He battles storms, and gets in fights with cannibal hunters, and fights with survival. With Cruesoe, you wonder how one man does it.
The plot, having action packed pages, out standing vocabulary, excellent development, and interesting twists, makes you sit at the edge of your seat, and want to read faster.
Though the book is fiction, it still has a moral. The moral that I think is having a lot to do with colonial times. Having no refrigerators, no computers, no television, and no microwave dinners. This book shows that man can live without modern conveniences. He doesn't need any of the fancy electronics we have made to be content.

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
This book was outstanding!!!. Daniel Defoe writes another amazing adventure of Robinson Crusoe. This book is about an adventurer who get's stranded on an island. His name is Robinson Crusoe, and he was born in England. One day when Robinson and his crew were on a boat there was a bad storm and they had to jump off the boat. They swim for shore and make camp.This story takes place on an island. The main characters are Robinson the adventurer,Friday - the slave, and Friday's father. These characters learn how to be friends and fight and work to get off this island. I recommend this book for anyone who likes action and adventure.

I liked the book. It was very factual and helped a great deal with research. It contains many accounts of the Plague.

Well, it's not really clear that Defoe used actual accounts, though he did draw on much discussion about the Great Plague. He was, after all, only five or six years old when it occured. But the narrative is utterly absorbing. Written by one of the greatest novelists of all time (he was Joyce's favorite English novelist), the narrative is vivid, moving, and sometimes hilarious. It is also remarkably contemporary. You meet quacks and prophets disturbingly similar to the no-nothings who dominate our own time. The descriptions of behavior, disease, fear, and denial are as fresh today, and as relevant, as they were when Defoe wrote the Journal. Don't miss it!

What makes Dafoes account of the plague so compelling is the fact that the story is based on real accounts. He, Mr Dafoe, has accomplished the task of bringing a distant event that could be easily overlooked and created a yearning to know anout the conditions of London and the people whom resided there during the toll of the plague.

This book is required reading for any serious scholar of piracy; much of what is known of piracy is derived from it. So, you should definitely read it if you care about the topic.
But the real reason I wrote this review was to let you all know that Daniel Defoe did not write this book. It was written by one Captain Charles Johnson, of whom little is known. The theory that is was actually written by Defoe has been soundly disproven by Defoe scholars. This edition is therefore attributed to the wrong man; be aware of this if you intend to cite this text.

Daniel Defoe (of "Robinson Crusoe" fame) offers a unique perspective on the entire history of piracy. A prolific writter, Defoe actually interviewed condemned and suspected pirates as they awaited their final fate at the gallows of Wapping along the Thames. His "History" is thorough to say the least tracing the act of piracy almost to the dawn of civilized sea travel. His depictions of the pirates, their methods and madnesses are written with the flare of a novelist and the restraint of a reporter giving the work an air of credibility and honesty. The outdated and long-winded style of Defoe's English is at times distracting, but should in no way deter the reader in delving deep into the lives of those most scurilous of sea robbers. A must for any pirate buff.

Pyrates, when we think of them we think of good for nothing brutes who plagued the seas and made they're prisoners walk the plank, in fact it's far from the truth. First of all let me point out that the plank walking is a myth and that most pyrates were not blood thirsty murderers. Daniel DeFoe wrote an excellent book, he gives you enough background on the person or place, before you read about him or it. Pirates for the most part were saillors who had lost they're jobs after the big wars, and turned to robbing the great ships like the Great Monghol's vessels of silver, gold, fabrics, spices and goods. All the captains especially Blackbeard(yes there really was a blackbeard) have great and colorful personalities and backgrounds. My favorite story in here would have to be the sad story of Cpt. Thomas Tew, one of the bravest pyrates ever, why should I tell you his story, read it for yourself, it's tragic and inspiring a great read. For an interesting piece of work, filled with alot of information and short stories look no further than Daniel Defoe's: A Genereal history of pyrates.

Probably one of the first examples of journalistic fiction, Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" is a pseudo-eyewitness account of the London plague of 1665. Writing this in 1722, Defoe casts himself into the role of his uncle whom he calls H.F. and who recounts the events in grisly detail but with magnanimous compassion. Aside from the prose, the book has a surprisingly modern edge in the way it combines facts about a sensationally dire historical event with "human interest" stories for personal appeal. It seems so factual that at times it's easy to forget that it's just a fictitious account of a real event.

The plague (H.F. writes) arrives by way of carriers from the European mainland and spreads quickly through the unsanitary, crowded city despite official preventive measures; the symptoms being black bruises, or "tokens," on the victims' bodies, resulting in fever, delirium, and usually death in a matter of days. The public effects of the plague are readily imaginable: dead-carts, mass burial pits, the stench of corpses not yet collected, enforced quarantines, efforts to escape to the countryside, paranoia and superstitions, quacks selling fake cures, etc. Through all these observations, H.F. remains a calm voice of reason in a city overtaken by panic and bedlam. By the time the plague has passed, purged partly by its own self-limiting behavior and partly by the Great Fire of the following year, the (notoriously inaccurate) Bills of Mortality indicate the total death toll to be about 68,000, but the actual number is probably more like 100,000 -- about a fifth of London's population.

Like Defoe's famous survivalist sketch "Robinson Crusoe," the book's palpable moralism is adequately camouflaged by the conviction of its narrative and the humanity of its narrator, a man who, like Crusoe, trusts God's providence to lead him through the hardships, come what may. What I like about this "Journal" is that its theme is more relevant than its narrow, dated subject matter suggests: levelheadedness in the face of catastrophe and the emergence of a stronger and wiser society.

Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is an interesting volume that blends fact and fiction quite indiscriminately, as the author intended. It is easy to forget it is fiction as it reads as fact (and it seems likely there are enough actual facts strewn throughout as to enhance this perception). Defoe was less concerned about these issues concerning fiction and non-fiction than modern readers and writers and it is fascinating to see an example of the early beginnings of novel writing. The style could frustate some readers (there is virtually no attempt at characters and only small strands of a narrative per se) but the descriptions of a town in crisis were both gripping and fascinating. An unique volume.

When a subject is gruesome it attracts notoriety. Unfortunately, if it is real, it loses it. This story of the the affects of the Plague in London in 1665 should be required reading for all people of all civilized countries. How the Plague started, how its spread was covered up initially and why, how the government was forced to respond, what happened to the economy and the outlying regions - these things could happen any day in any year in any country. Look at the news archives of the spread of SARS, how the government in (I think) Indonesia enacted house quarantines, how the Chinese economy was distablized. This is a very real warning and will not lose its timeliness as long as people build cities and economies. He is not just describing what happened but giving us warning and ideas for how it can be handled better.

West provides a very readable, unfussy biography, presenting a vivid and detailed portrait of Defoe's life and times. He falls short with his "analysis" of the novels, which amounts to little more than plot summary, but his insight into Defoe's character--as a man of high moral principle who occasionally succumbed to expediency--is priceless.

With the tools of a storyteller, Richard West takes his readers on a journey to the world of the enigmatic Daniel Defoe and the political machinations of Britain at the dawn of the 18th century. To any reader,even to one who has a limited understanding of British history, West paves a path among the intrigue of the Whigs and Tories, and has his reader follow the footsteps of Defoe into the Tower of London, the roads of Great Britain, and the gardens of rulers. With the ability to explain Defoe's mysterious background, West guides the reader toward an understanding of a man who has remained elusive for centuries. West offers the reader an explanation for the many masks that Defoe wore as writer, invester, spy and traveler. With the skill of a story-teller, West opens a world of historic fact even to the most reluctant non-fiction reader.

In Daniel Defoe: The Life And Strange, Surprising Adventures, biographer Richard West tells the story of Daniel Defoe, a maverick, a Puritan, and a dissenter without a constituency. Defoe was also a bankrupt who rubbed elbows with a king, a hack who never failed to pursue the truth. And the writer who produced such literary classics as Moll Flanders, Roxana, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Robinson Crusoe. Defoe's life was every bit as dramatic and unexpected as the protagonists of his famous novels. West has wonderfully and scrupulously recreated the remarkable personality and the colorful times that shaped and were shaped by this noted, fascinating, unique and historic literary figure.