Vorab-RezensentenRichard Bangs

Running wild rivers such as the crocodile-infested Tekaze in Ethiopia, Richard Bangs lived for the adrenalin, for the rush of reveling in the misery of hardship and sidestepping death around every bend. Bangs classic, The Lost River, which recounts first descents in Ethiopia and demands a single-session chair-gripping read epitomizes the rough-and-ready formative years of Bangs as the explorer's explorer. As Bangs and his compadres survived river after river, a new purpose presented itself, though. Now an eminent and respected conservationist, Web pioneer, ambassador, and explorer, Bangs still travels to exotic and difficult environments, but with a new purpose: "Over the decades, I have witnessed many special places preserved and lost, and the critical vector in their survival or demise was more often than not the number of visitors who trekked the landscape or floated the river and were touched deeply by their unique beauty and spirit. When such a space became threatened, there was a constituency for whom the place was personal, a collective force ready to lend energy, monies, and time to preservation." The result of Bangs philanthropy is now the preservation and promotion of threatened people's, places, habitats, and animals. Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose follows Richard from Bosnia to Libya, Panama to the American West, Rwanda to Thailand, all in a search to make sense of disappearing cultures and rivers, to save them by bringing them to life. In typical Bangs narrative, Adventures with Purpose plows to the heart of the matter, painting peoples and places as he weaves among them, creating landscapes that tell their own story.

A companion to the second in the series of PBS specials on Adventures with Purpose, The Quest for Kaitakitanga is a grand adventure that traces a trail from the bottom of the earth, the southern-most tip of the South Island of New Zealand, up through the heart of this country, ending at the tree of the Maori spirit myth at the north end of the North Island.