The term "Vikings" brings to minds an image of mystery and war. And when an author sets out on a voyage tracing the Viking routes, nothing could be better to "Vikingophiles". I was eagerly looking forward to reading this book.

Having read this book I must admit that I find Theroux's and Dalrymple's travelogues easier to read. For one, living in a tropical country and not having set foot on the cold northern countries, I found the book very difficult to read because it introduced too many unfamiliar terms to me. Only a picture dictionary could have helped me :-) Perhaps the author could have attached some photographs of the cold and lonely places to give us an idea of what it's like. Another drawback of the book is that the author has tried to be too funny and it sounds a bit artificial. Or perhaps I am more used to Theroux's humour :-)

I would still rate this as a great book and worth adding to your library of travelogues. Mr. Millman, you should now travel to Finland, Siberia, northern Japan(Hokkaido) and northern Russia and write another book on those cold places. That will be a good sequel.

It is appropriate that Paul Theroux, that globetrotting curmudgeon who gave us THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS and so many other great travel books, should write the introduction for this edition of Millman's LAST PLACES. Millman takes Theroux's world-weariness to higher latitudes -- from Norway across to the Shetlands and Faroes, from there to Iceland and Greenland, and ending up in Labrador.

But like Theroux, Millman is wonderfully entertaining. See him witness a Faroese "grindadráp," or mass slaughter of a whole pod of whales, by throngs of gleeful Faroese bearing hooks and knives. See him wake up naked and hung over in a drainage ditch after a night of carousing in Reykjavik. And, most funny of all, see him fend off love-starved Inuit maidens in Nuuk who crave his bod and are not too dainty about their seduction technique.

Millman is a bit of a loner, and yet his book sparkles most when he is interacting with the locals. Because this happens hardly at all in the Shetlands, this is the weakest part of his book. LAST PLACES picks up steam as he visits an isolated lighthouse keeper in the West Fjords of Iceland whose library extends to 16,000 volumes. His encounters with Inuits in Greenland are priceless. And the episodes in Labrador show us a land of isolated cranks and eccentrics attempting to protect their way of life from do-gooder government relocation projects.

When the thermometer rises, pick up this book to cool you off. It makes for great summer reading. And it is excellent preparation for my upcoming trip to Iceland. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

A truly wonderful book about traveling in the North from Norway to Newfoundland. Millmand sets out to trace the Viking Route across the North Atlantic and along the way comes up with tales magical and gritty at the same time. My favorite is his meeting with the lighthouse keeper who lives with his library of 16,000 books. Millman has the ability to be open to every experience, take it all in, meet all kinds of human beings and make it come alive in words. This one goes on my short shelf to be read over again. A great book for travelers dreaming of a northern journey and for armchair travelers alike.

This is the sort of book that you can keep by your bedside and dip into when you need to read a little before sleep. Not that it is soporific, but it is doled out in little bite-sized pieces. Or read on the train on the way to work in order to enjoy an otherwise mundane trip. Or take on holidays and read on the beach.

It is not trying to be profound or make massive statements about the deeper issues of travel at every turn. It is, however, fun and interesting.

No doubt about it, Millman is a consummate travel writer. We see him in the South Seas, in the Far North, in the Eduadorian jungle--it's amazing, the places he gets to. Millman doesn't just hang around the fun spots, either--he has a compulsion to get to the out of the way places, to see the unusual things. And he also has a knack for finding people, guides usually, and having telling experiences and interactions with them. These interactions become the vehicle for the story. It may be with an Eskimo in Larador, or with scientists studying headshrinkers in Eduacor--Millman sees them perceptively and tells about them with humor. Beyond the brilliant travel writing and storytelling, it's the humor that makes these essays and this book so very entertaining. Millman is one of the funniest writers I've ever read, and should be placed among the great humorists as well as the best travel writers.

What's it like to actually go somewhere remote like Banda (part of Indonesia)? Or to Gwaii Haanas, the ancient home of the Haida Indians (near British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands)? Or Sark, which claims to be Britain's last stronghold of feudalism?

Ask Larry Millman. He loves the world's remote places, and he searches them out, the way a wine lover might search for a particular vintage, or a mycologist might look for a rare mushroom. His accounts of his travels give you the feeling that you're been there at his good-natured side the whole time, seeing what he sees and enjoying it all. And lucky you: He, as the writer, had to endure the freezings, the drenchings, the fearful climbs, the tumbles into rocky ravines, the difficulties of eating local foods, while you, the reader, get away with merely a vicarious shudder or two.

Because of the unusual places he goes, Millman could be called an adventure-travel writer, but he offers none of the usual macho bravado that so often accompanies these kinds of dispatches. His travels don't lack for physical challenges, but it is the place he visits - however difficult it might be - and not his ability to conquer it that interests him. Nor does he promote a site as a place for others to visit, except, of course, by reading his books. As a result, he can write about remote locations while avoiding the Outside Magazine Curse, which is that simply writing about a remote spot can trigger the horde of visitors that will destroy its beauty and uniqueness.

Buy this well-written book. You'll be glad you did.

Green Mountain Farm is one of my favorite books on county living. The book focuses not on "how-to" but rather on nature, eccentric characters, contented introspection, and concise philosophical musings. The book is a collection of essays describing a life that many of us dream about: leaving the city to create a happy and successful life in a beautiful countryside. Merrick writes in excellent prose, full of crystal-clear imagery, wit, and occasional humor, easily carrying the reader into his world.

Merrick converts the tedium, never-ending farm work, and other hardships of life on a remote farm into benefits. Even mistakes are fortunate. "We did everything wrong, but it turned out right." Perhaps this rosy view of such a life was mostly due to Merrick's outlook: "It's a matter of temperament, you see."

This book tells the story of a writer who settles in Vermont in 1934 with his family. It is filled with personal stories of adventures that the family had and the people that they met. Early in the book, an immigrant ski maker convinces the family to move up to the Northeast Kingdom. Merrick describes the early days of the ski industry, when people still wore homemade equipment on the slopes. He also describes his part in the 1930s survey of farming practices, contrasting his own experiences working his farm to supplement his writing income.

This book shoud be back in print. It is a wonderful piece of first rate journalism. The folks come alive and Millman as always shows the Human Side. For the gent who posted the other review, if you want a copy of the book again go to ABE or Advance Book Exchange!

Although the world ended long ago, Millman takes you through some fascinating fragments. Poignant, vivid, engrossing. It's a great book. I only wish I hadn't lent mine before it went out of print.

Here's the perfect stocking stuffer for anyone with the capacity to both love literature and laugh at it. Millman takes off Polar explorers' death diaries, Krakauer's Everest, the Perfect Storm, the Lost Generation, the Bible -- well, you get it. No sacred cow goes unskewered. It's rare that a book makes me laugh out loud but this one did it!

Traveller Millman lucked out in the Middle East when he made a serendipitous discovery of some pages from God's daybook. Some pages they are, filled with self-doubt, miracle mixups, and mis-smotings. I, for one found this terribly reassuring.
He has put those pages together with others found in his world wandering (how do these things happen to the man?), among which are pages from an immensely inept but safely anonymous explorer; an unfortunate American in Gertrude Stein's Paris; a green-lighted filmmaker casting Brad Pitt as the Dalai Lama, among other too real send-ups; Attila's diary fragments that show the lad's vulnerability at the hands of his ill-tempered wife; and there is more!
A wonderful piece of comic work by a terrific writer who, even when he goes to the summit, does not go over the top.

A vividly strange (and sometimes gruesome) but rich collection of Eskimo folktales from the barren, frigid Arctic. These odd tales weave themes of magic, taboo, old age and death throughout. They are derived from a remote land and a highly imaginative oral tradition.

To give you an idea, some of the specific stories describe men who marry rocks and old people who marry insects, children who grow antlers, children who eat their parents, animals who steal body parts from human corpses and women with iron tails.

This collection is a great read, (...and not for the queasy).

Highly recommended for any kayakers with a fascination for Greenland and Innuit history & culture

Northern Latitudes showcases the prose poetry of travel writer Lawrence Millman who writings evoke the people and landscapes of the far northern climes of Canada, Greenland, Labrador, Iceland, and the northern reaches of the British Isles.

The Last Angakok (Angmagssalik, Greenland, 1984): Bedridden he is, this bundle of age, who once could fly merely by flexing his index fingers. Songless he is, this man of songs, who once could chant away avalanches and piterag winds with the great guttural of his voice. And full of sickness he is, this healer, who once could cure everything from rheumatism to possession by unfriendly spirits. Now there's no one left to cure him, and so his sleeping skins mark the compass points of his universe. Yet his eye, slitted half moons, remain bright: they still inhabit a numinous realm. Flying is easy, they say it's the not flying that's hard.

Great Book! Written by the explorer himself, the story comes 'straight from the horse's mouth' telling of the his expedition to Greenland in the early 1900's. Seeing inside the lives of Mikkelsen and his companion, Iversen during this expedition makes me wonder if anyone today in our soft, comfortable life could ever endure what they did. Their outlook and physical stamina during their hardship makes my 'discomforts' look like peanuts!

A deeply moving misadventure. In getting lost, these three men discovered the soul of Labrador as well as the true meaning of friendship and survival. This book is a classic.

I have read this book several times, and would recomend it to anyone that enjoys an adventure story. I enjoy it even more than most as Leonidas Hubbard was my grandfathers first cousin.This book has been almost required reading in our family,(Hubbard).I hope the publisher will reprint it as we have many family members looking for a copy of the book.

I have read a lot of teen adventure books. I recently read this one while I was on a rugged boys canoe camp trip. We went on a 7 week trip with 12 men to labrador. I purchased this book because it was nonfiction and it was saying how these 3 brave, adventurous men took a trip similar to the area i'll be going to. It talked about how mothernature just (threre's really no word for it but...)Destroys these people and they fight back with courage and hope in succeeding this raw adventure. The three in progress of there adventure take care of eachother and keep eachother alive nad in this doing they become better than great friends almost brothers. I really don't want to ruin the book for you, but i suggest so strongly that you get a copy of this book, and oh yea the beginning of the book really is boring because it tells you of how they got to labrador in 1902 (they didn't have cars).

EXPLORE adds 18 well-selected tales of adventure to the Adrenaline series. They blend of humor, like Tim Cahill's Peruvian expedition with two eccentric companions; dangerous adventure, including A.N. de Vaca's exploration of America in the early 1500's; and more scholarly accounts, such as David Roberts' search for lost cliff dwellings in New Mexico. The best feature of this book, and the series as a whole, is that it exposes us to writings that we would otherwise never see. Ms Schwamm has cast her net widely and hauled in four centuries of engaging exploration stories. Some are excerpted from works out of print, but the bibliography makes it possible to track these books down if you must hear the rest of the story. So why only four stars? As a collector of the entire series, I find this volume less spine-tingling than the rest, with fewer stories of death-defying danger, which is okay - not all exploration involves a struggle to survive if you go about it properly. If you like National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, this is a book for you.