Voyages and Travels, islands 

"An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe." Just as Henry David Thoreau found satisfaction in dreaming about these insular bodies encompassed by water, who among us has not thought of "getting away from it all" to some distant paradise isle?

There is something strangely compelling about islands - their remoteness, their isolation - something romantic and readily embraced by the human spirit. Majestic Island Worlds captures these feelings for readers who are yearning for adventure.

Throughout this book you'll journey to exciting landfalls: island nations such as New Zealand, a sports lover's dreamland of outdoor beauty; faraway islands - the Saychelles, where sunbathers laze on unspoiled beaches and swim with colorful fish that cascade over coral "like waterfalls of yellow and blue"; islands of solitude - the Galapagos, a sanctuary for dragonlike creatures found nowhere else on earth.

You'll see snowcapped peaks and shimmering lakes, and stroll along shorelines gently unfurled to meet the waves of the sea. In a setting of haunted beauty, you'll feel the "soft days" of Ireland, "when mist hangs like a veil over the countryside, blurring field and village."

Tranquillity and timelessness await you in Japan. You'll wander past Shinto shrines and through Japanese gardens and find a "reverence for simplicity, raised to an art."

Music, dance, and pageantry welcomes you to the fabled isle of Bali, where you'll join a religious procession and march to the sonorous rhythms of gong, cymbals, and drums.

For centuries explorers and adventurers, writers and poets have filled our imagination with the marvels of lands just beyond the horizon. Now, with spirited prose and lavish photographs, Majestic Island Worlds transports you beyond imagination to the real settings of these intriguing lands that rise above the sea.

Taken from the inside front flap.