Edward Kanze

Would have made it three and a half, if goodreads allowed. The descriptions of Australia are good and the book benefits from the frequent comments of people like Twain, Huxley, Muir et Al that the author adds.
It is best read with a device at hand, since there are no illustrations and this will whet your appetite for the described Australian animals and scenes.
The only reason I’m not rating it higher is that the author did not endear himself to the reader… or at least not to this reader. He seemed at turns ungrateful, whiny, pretentious ( could have done without the Odyssey frame) judgmental and more than a bit of a mooch.
It is a very difficult thing for a white man to comment on imperialism and the fate of the Aborigines and I don’t quite think this author pulled it off.… (more)

The author and his wife see over 400 different birds on their journey around the continent of Australia, and each one is detailed in this book. Sound boring? It's not. This book is a great guide to travel across Australia. Not in the "eat here, sleep there, and don't forget to see this sight!", Lonely Planet-type of guide, but in the sense that it tells you what exactly it was like to travel through it. That does include a fair amount of info about Australian wildlife, but written in a totally accessible style. Thanks to the index I've actually been able to use this book to identify plants and animals on my trip.… (more)

This is the sort of book you keep to read a few pages of while the kettle boils, or the website loads or the bath fills with water. A couple of pages of reading about driving the entire way around Australia (avoiding the cities wherever possible) and listing every single animal the author and his wife come across - and those that they don't see as well is about all I could take at a sitting. However, the book has charm. I'm not sure where that charm resides, but I didn't give the book up and now I know if I go to Australia, which I would like to, that I shouldn't bother driving around the perimeter of the island-continent and criss-crossing the mountains and deserts because unless you are a list-keeping naturalist, its a trip that definitely sounds like it lacks charm.… (more)

This coffee-table-size book, richly illustrated with splendid color photographs of Burroughs beloved flowers, trees, birds, and natural landscapes, as well as with historic photos, presents a thorough & engaging picture of one of the noteworthy self-avowed Pantheists of the last century. Burroughs published 28 books between 1867 & 1922, writing about literature as well as nature, and earning a popularity in his time as great as that of his contemporaries & kindred spirits, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.… (more)