Countless islands dot our earth but only a few are famous. This unique book ushers readers on trips to places where they are unlikely to travel in any physical sense, making each special in its own right. From Skraeling Island in the High Arctic to the shores of New Zealand’s Aukland Islands and Easter Island in the Pacific, each of the twenty-five island destinations in this wonderful book embodies a force that governs destiny in some way. Touched by history and fate, many islands figure largely in the lives of humans. And some are the last and only refuge for many unique animals. Indonesia consists of 17,110 islands: six thousand have names; 922 are permanently inhabited; two have an amazing history: Komodo, the island home of the Komodo dragon, the largest lizard on earth, and remote Lembata, home to daring sea hunters whose sacred boats have not changed in seven hundred years. Islands can determine fate. Had England not been an island, Napoleon might well have invaded and conquered her. In that case, he would not have spent his last years on small and isolated St. Helena Island, chosen by fate and enemies to be his place of banishment. On the Galapagos Islands, that “little world in itself”, Charles Darwin conceived the theory of evolution that would change our vision of the world. On tiny Attu Island in the Aleutians, Americans and Japanese fought one of the the most prolonged and bloody battles of World War II. And Santorini was the centre of a great culture four thousand years ago and may have been Plato’s marvelous kingdom of Atlantis. Of the many islands Fred Bruemmer has visited over his lifetime, he selected twenty-five whose history and fate are disparate and fascinating. On some of these he lived for weeks, on a few for many months. Each island history is accompanied by photographs and a map showing its location.

FRED BRUEMMER is an internationally acclaimed author and photographer of more than twenty books, including Seasons of the Seal, Arctic Memories, and Glimpses of Paradise. He has spent his life travelling extensively throughout the circumpolar regions and to other remote parts of the globe. He speaks nine languages and has written more than a thousand articles for publications around the world, including Canadian Geographic, Natural History, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. Fred Bruemmer and his wife live in Montreal.

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