If you want shark stories, stear clear of this book. Make no mistake; Marriot makes an incredible journey and has some amazing experiences. However, he has direct encounters with only three sharks and those all occured in one day. I would say 75% of this book is about Nicaragua's history and politics, 10% discusses shark mythology and 10% is a heavy handed attempt to draw metaphors between the two. This leaves 5% for actual sharks.

In short, a big disappoint for shark fans. Instead, check out Shark Attacks : Their Causes and Avoidance by Thomas B. Allen.

Our son sent us this book,after reading it while in Nicaragua.
My husband comes from a GREAT story-telling family and this book feels like it belongs in our family tales!Who would believe a book about the near-disappearance of shark fishing in Nicaragua would be SO compeling?

A few of the human kind can be found in places like Bluefields, Nicaragua, where if this book had instead been set in the wild west of the US, the only proper name for some of the residents would be desperados. Although conditions are definitely frontier-like the characters are very 20th century, and uniquely Nicaraguan. Interspersed throughout SAVAGE SHORE are referrences to, and the occasional crossing of paths with, Sandinistas, Contras, Colombian drug dealers and the odd modern day pirate. These characters though are not even the central focus, but they certainly add to what is already a fascinating and well written travelogue, cultural study, nature journal, and critique on human greed, economic exploitation, and political chaos.

The central characters are not men at all but bull sharks that live, breed, and hunt in the Caribbean waters of Nicaragua's east coast. It is the "most willful and aggressive of all tropical sharks" and what makes it unique and worthy of a book, is that "like no other shark, it possessed the ability to cross from salt water to freshwater, hunting far upriver". That means that the bull shark can be found up the Escondido river near Bluefields or more impressively, 60 miles up the San Juan river, all the way to Lake Nicaragua. It is as the author says "shark where shark should not be - in fresh water, on human territory."

The book tells the tale of this shark and the men who hunt it, as they have for generations, - bravely, in open dugout canoes with hand held lines. The sharks are hunted for their body oils, the fins are used to make soup and the skin is tanned into leather. Poverty means that resource management is non-existent and overfishing means that the shark itself may soon be gone from its last great freshwater holdout - lake Nicaragua.

Fear and greed, the author says, are the two most common human emotions the bull shark elicits. Perhaps it's fitting then that this also best describes the pervasive feeling that one gets from this rough and tumble area. History has a part to play. In the 17th century Bluefields was the capital of the British protectorate - the Mosquito Coast - which stretched the length of Nicaragua's Caribbean shoreline to Puerto Cabeza in the north, and beyond into what is now Honduras. This explains how a town with an Anglo name exists in a Latin country. Slaves from Jamaica were brought in and their descendants are now the large, patois/english speaking Creole population. Co-existence with the Miskito, Sumu, and Ramu indians has not always been peaceful but the natives of this area have at times pulled together, usually in the face of some external threat, whether natural as in the many hurricanes that have devastated the area, or man made as in the political tribalism and battles between Sandinistas and Contras.

This story of sharks, at sea and on land, makes the place most appropriately named SAVAGE SHORE. Yet in an irony fitting for this book, the area is also the focal point of Nicaragua's tourism industry.

PLAGUE starts out slow but gathers steam in the last hundred pages. This progression may have been inevitable. True stories of killer diseases have emerged as a genre in recent years since the publishing of Richard Preston's THE HOT ZONE, and the plague in particular is probably the most written-about disease in human history. So Marriott needed to try something new or be hopelessly derivative. The problem with this book is that Marriott perhaps attempts tries in too many ways before the story steadies itself and becomes compelling.

The basic set up of the book is, HOT ZONE-like, an icky outline of what the disease can do, then the story of the scientific exploration of the disease. (Even more than THE HOT ZONE, PLAGUE's tale of scientific rivalry in the race to understand the disease reminded me of Gina Kolata's FLU). This story, the rivalry between French doctor Alexander Yersin and his Japanese competitor, Kitasato Shibasaburo, is essentially what the book is about.

But before the Yersin-Kitasato race becomes interesting, Marriott inserts several side stories, some of which distract from the momentum of the main story. Most distracting is an ongoing story about a 1994 plague outbreak in India. That's only the lengthiest of several stories of "future" plague outbreaks. I think the point is that even though the bacteria that causes plague was identified a hundred years ago, even though the disease is now treatable, even though its method of transmission is now understood, it is still a problem for human societies. But the point could have been made better in a more linear story. As it is, the side stories seem to be inserted in slow moments of the main story. Perhaps Marriott felt that the main story did not provide enough material for a full, suspenseful book.

Nevertheless, the suspense level of PLAGUE picks up and the Yersin-Kitasato story reaches a finite end. Not so the larger story of the plague, as indicated by the somewhat open-ended Indian outbreak story, which mutates into a more personal story about a family affected by the social impact of what turns out to be a small outbreak. Unfortunately, this is how the book ends. I think I understand why, but it just doesn't work.

Ask most educated people about the plague and the response you will get probably revolves around the "Black Death" of the Middle Ages that wiped out a good portion of the population of Europe. Most books about the plague tend to focus on this period. But Marriott's book reminds us that the plague is not gone, still popping up its ugly head from time to time.

In a world chilled by thoughts of bio-terrorism and SARS, most people tend to avoid books like this but I find them interesting. Humans will always be susceptible to disease but we will always fight back. In this book, Marriott tells the parallel stories of an outbreak of plague in southeast Asia in 1894 where two scientists--Alexandre Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato--tried to determine the process of this disease and an outbreak of plague in India in 1994 where he shows how panic still dominates our reactions to epidemics in our modern world. Along the way, he reminds Americans that plague also has its claws in the United States though our medical system tends to keep things at bay.

Ultimately, Marriott gives us a good look into the foundations of modern medicine and how diseases came to be combated despite the combat, both intellectual and physical, between doctors of different nations and sensibilities. He also reminds us in a rather subtle way of how primitive our response to deadly sickness remains despite our drugs and treatments--something that we need to be reminded of in a world where we could be called to respond to an epidemic on many fronts. His prose may not be as gripping as some writers in this field (Richard Preston comes to mind) but he gets the job done in a very readable way.

"Plague," is a briskly paced history for the non-specialist that opens with the graphic and frightening journey of a large rat through a Hong Kong market place that is a sure attention grabber. Author Edward Marriott also takes us to the back alleys and shantytowns of Africa, India, and the US as he explains the course of bubonic-plague, and the standard reactions of doctors and politicians wherever there's an outbreak.

On a planet as small, with a population as fragile, it's a constant surprise that earth-dwellers have such difficulty doing the "right thing." "Plague" is a another chronicle of cupidity, and arrogance in medical research, thankfully blessed by the altruism of field epidemiologists who literally risked their lives to investigate a cause and cure for the "black death."

The primary story is quite the thriller with two epidemiologists racing for an outcome - Shibasaburo Kitasato and his team coddled by Hong Kong's British governor, and Frenchman Alexandre Yersin, working alone and hampered by the governor. Although the results are history, "Plague," is enough of a thriller that I won't spoil the pleasure for readers who are not medical historians.

"Plague," had me glued to the page, and I recommend it to anyone who has a layman's interest in medical history.

The Lost Tribe is an account of a journalists short (2 week) trip into one of Papua New Guinea's more remote areas. The book is descriptively well written, but is also full of inaccuracies caused by the authors lack of knowlege of local languages and of modern Papua New Guinea. The people he descibes may well be highly isolated but as with most of PNG, their names are included in the common role. Had he given imself more time he could have obatined proper maps which reveal the location of the village and the fictitious volcano he descibes. He could also have learnt Pidgin properly which would have been useful in getting himeself out of the situation that arose. What the author doesn't know is that after his departure from Wanakepa those villagers were forced to pay huge compensation for what happened. They would like the author to bare some of the cost. I'm sure this could be arranged through MAF whoom he can contact through the internet.

This was an author I had hoped would deliver something that many travel-writers don't - a sense of the freedom and anguish of the way we once lived, portrayed through the experiences of the living. In review, he largely managed this. But I still felt strangely unsatisfied when finishing the book. A feeling that emerges from the fact that you leave the story without actually knowing all that much about the tribe. You see, in truth this book is more about a series of events along a storyline than an expose of a 'lost' tribe. Of course this has much to do with his difficulties in communicating with the tribe, but nevertheless it is a shame.

I did though feel that this story highlights the gulf still existing in the world across the spectrum of human cultures. It is for the reader to decide (or not) the value in maintaining or trying to close such a gulf, and for whose benefit - ours or theirs. For example, the impact of western religion on such tribes is shown in the book to be thoughtless and combattant in the way it is taught. Perhaps to be expected in the 18th or 19th century, but quite disturbing when it is in the present day.

In conclusion, I think Marriot has done the Liawep justice with this story, but the damage he did during the course of his stay will probably haunt him and the Liawep for many years to come.

It is not often that one finds travel writing elevated to the level of adventure. What's more, Marriott's prose is clear and sincere. Overall, a great read. If you have not got your hand on a good travel book in a while, invest in this one. I'm going out to get the "Savage shore".