Michael D'Orso

D'Orso's ethnography of the people who live on the Galápagos Islands is at times interesting and other times, very confusing.

Overall, the picture is pretty bleak. The Galápagos face pressures both external and internal from humans, and D'Orso does a fair job detailing both. However, his whirlwind tour of the Islands and its people left me confused as to just who was who, and their relation to one another. A glossary of names, places, and the Spanish terms he uses throughout would have gone a long way towards relieving some of that.

The organization of the book also contributed to my confusion. There was a vague chronological order of book based on when the author met the people he was describing, but he would also go back into the Islands' history to detail events specific to those people at that point, which muddled things.… (mehr)

This is a pretty good starting point for anybody concerned about the breadth of issues currently facing the health of our oceans. The book is beautifully laid out with some fantastic photography and doubles nicely as a coffee table book. However, it also reads like a bit of a brochure for Oceana, the conservation group that Ted Danson fronts. If you want something that offers more regarding these issues and is enjoyable to read, I would direct you to works from Carl Safina and Four Fish by Paul Greenberg.… (mehr)