Books worth reading #23 - 'Last Chance to See' by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

I suppose I should have waited until I reached 'Books worth reading #42' before I published this post. 

But, as today is Towel Day, the annual celebration of the life and work of author Douglas Adams, it seems appropriate enough. 

Douglas, as I'm sure you know, was best known as the creator of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently books. He was also something of a futurist, environmentalist and philosopher and many of the ideas he explored in his fiction books have genuinely come to pass. Sadly, he died before the advent of smartphones (he died tragically young aged 49 in 2001) but he would have loved them as they are exactly what his proposed Hitchhiker's Guide 'electronic book' predicted. 

However, I'm going to focus today on his only published non-fiction book, Last Chance to See, which he co-authored with biologist Mark Carwardine (Note: I suppose you could call The Meaning of Liff - a book he co-authored with John Lloyd, a non-fiction book too although it does contain fictional meanings of words). 

It's an extraordinary book in which Douglas and Mark travel around the world to visit some of the world's rarest animals. The idea was to see first-hand the reasons why animals like the Aye-Aye, the Mauritius Kestrel and the Kakapo (a large green flightless parrot) are facing extinction - invariably it's because of human activity. But the authors also wanted the book to celebrate the brilliant work being done by passionate conservationists to bring these species back from the brink. The book is shot through with Mark's insights and observations and all pulled together by Douglas's wit and enthusiasm. 

It's my favourite book of all time. And my first edition copy (seen above) is very special because it's signed by both authors.

I was lucky to meet Douglas on several occasions and I always (cheekily) took along a book for him to sign. You can read the full history of events on a previous blogpost here.

Last Chance to See is a magnificent book and it's a great tragedy that Douglas never got to write any more in this idiom. We do get a taste of what might have been in the posthumously published The Salmon of Doubt in which a magazine article - which could one day have been the chapter of a new book - describes his experience of swimming with Manta Rays. It has all the wit, clever observation and charm of Last Chance.

Oh, what might have been.