This fascinating text and many exquisite color photographs reveal the mystery of islands: Pacific islands - low coral atolls with azure lagoons, or green forested islands whose mountain pinnacles are lost in the low-flying clouds of trade winds. We are transported from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean; from the forbidding cliffs of Bonaventure Island, where hundreds of thousands of northern gannets nest on rocky ledges, to the ice-locked Antarctic, where emperor penguins nest in the dead of winter.