[Thor Heyerdahl's] ability to write for the general reader and to capture the imagination of all who have hidden desires to discover lost information about exotic peoples has endeared him to a public not overly concerned with scientific facts. After all, what could be more exciting than sailing on a raft from South America to Polynesia or dangerous rope descents to secret storage caves to discover small stone sculptures unknown to all who had gone before? These sculptures are the focus of Heyerdahl&#...

[The] daring and dramatic journey [of the Kon-Tiki and her six crewmen] demonstrated beyond any doubt that the pre-European inhabitants of South America could have reached Polynesia. The possibility is one thing, the probability another. In ["American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition"], Mr. Heyerdahl presents his arguments for the reality of such migrations. His thesis, to state it briefly, is that the earlier Polynesians came from Peru via Easter Island, and t...

[Kon-Tiki] is a mystery story—although there is no crime beyond the polite defiance of "sound advice," no plot except a problem of long-distance transport by raft, no solution to an ethnological question that has intrigued men since Magellan, Querios, and Cook explored the Pacific Ocean. Here, too, is an adventure story—for it is an extraordinary record of men drifting 4,000 miles on the sea amidst unforeseen perils, under a world of stars. And here is fine descriptive writing. T...

Thor Heyerdahl, whose Kon-Tiki expedition captured the young imagination of the world, visited Easter Island in the last few years and with a party of arachæologists and anthropologists made his own investigations…. He claims that as a result he has solved the mystery of Easter Island, that it was first settled about AD 400 by people from central and south America, that the great statues (which he places in his second period of occupation, say between the tenth and fifteenth centuries AD) get ...

The voyages of Thor Heyerdahl across the Atlantic provide instructive examples of adventures undertaken ostensibly in search of knowledge. In The Ra Expeditions the story is told of how, in pursuit of an idea, if not of a theory, Mr Heyerdahl at a second attempt succeeded in crossing the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados in a craft made of papyrus stems lashed together with ropes…. The account of the [first attempt and the second successful voyage] can do nothing but arouse admiration for the temerit...

[In "American Indians in the Pacific"] Heyerdahl marshals exceedingly convincing visual evidence of pre-Columbian American Indian influences in the Pacific. In no other single book can there be found an equally rich collection of that data—scientific, cultural, historical—so necessary for the developement of a reasoned theory of the colonization of Polynesia. Without taking into account these facts and their interpretation—many of them published for the first time in this ...

[In The Tigris Expedition Heyerdahl goes to] the very cradle of Western civilization for the most impressive of all his craft and the most satisfying of his theories. This new venture, the building of a reed boat in Mesopotamia, started with few preconceived theories. Thor Heyerdahl simply wished to prove that the Sumerians were capable of building ocean-going boats from the berdi reeds that grow in such profusion in the Tigris marshes. But as the voyage progressed and the reed boat Tigris proved triumphant...

Let it be said immediately that Thor Heyerdahl has pulled it off again. He has written a superb adventure-book ["The Ra Expeditions"] about a superb adventure…. Heyerdahl has lost none of his magic of phrase, and the translation renders faithfully the laconic playing-down of real danger and hard work which comes almost naturally to Norwegians. We are introduced most thoroughly to the reed boat as still existing—in Peru, Mexico, Central Africa and Ethiopia—and this section,...

It is the deep connection with nature and a tremendous simplicity that makes ["Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft"] great as few books of our time are great…. [It has quickly spread through the world] with the speed of a small classic being born and the suggestion that it contains a strong medicine for modern man. The book records the straight-forward chronicle of a 4,300-mile passage across the Pacific by six naked men on a raft. Its pages reflect a minimum of philosophical overtones...

Much of the credit for establishing early man's rightful foothold in history goes to author-adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, who popularized his theory of the evolution of navigation and civilization in his Kon-Tiki (Pacific) and Ra (Atlantic) expeditions. This slightly repetitive and highly detailed collection of essays [Early Man and the Ocean] bolsters the Norwegian's contention that "invisible marine conveyors"—tides and currents—not only dictated the flow of ancient ...

[The saga of "Kon-Tiki"] is a revelation of how exciting science can become when it inspires a man with the heart of Leif Ericsson and the merry story-telling gift of an Ernie Pyle…. [The six men on the raft came to learn that] whether it was 1947 A.D. or B.C. was of no significance. "We realized that life had been full for men before the technical age also—in fact, fuller and richer in many ways than the life of modern man."

Thor Heyerdahl's latest feat is to have reconstructed a papyrus ship from Egyptian tomb-reliefs and crossed the Atlantic in it with a polyglot crew, a stirring enough enterprise in itself, related with his own brand of visionary robustness [in The Ra Expeditions]. But those who know their man will not need telling that his primary motive was not to get from A to B. By demonstrating the unguessed sea-going capabilities of papyrus he has exposed a chink in one of the strong points of an argument that r...

Two unique voyages, three ponderous books of scientific probings: what more can Heyerdahl do? He can continue to produce entertaining books. Fatu-Hiva is of the same quality as his three popular classics, The Kon-Tiki Expedition, The Ra Expeditions and Aku-Aku. But it appears to be a reissue (for the first time in English) of a 1938 Oslo publication, and retains some inevitable naivety….

["Fatu-Hiva"] is an attention-riveting escape book as well as a revealing, if unnecessarily preachy, essay on what white men have done to a once happy South Sea island, and how the island retaliated against a white couple attempting to settle there. Although scarcely the literary equal of some of the work of other authors [such as Robert Louis Stevenson, James Michener, and Herman Melville], or Heyerdahl's own best seller, "Kon-Tiki," it is a valuable contribution to the k...

["Fatu-Hiva"] indefatigably records the details of [Liv and Thor Heyerdahl's] semi-informed leap into another way of life. The account is buoyed by the author's persistent enthusiasm for the project, despite obvious privations, bouts with disease, and incidents of danger. The journey itself, and not surprisingly the book about it, carries an undertone of hippie-like defiance of modern-day conveniences and customary ways of looking at life and purpose. The reader races ahead to th...

Thor Heyerdahl made his voyage on the balsa raft in defense of a theory, the theory of the Pacific as a highway by which Peruvian men and ideas came to Polynesia. [Sea Routes to Polynesia is] a set of nine of his papers, mostly written in the 1960's, expounding and elaborating on this theme. His work on the curious multiple centerboards of the Incas that make balsa rafts such as Kon-Tiki capable of tacking and sailing into the wind, and his understanding of long sea voyages under plausible early circ...

[In Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation and Seaborne Civilizations], one of the last of the world's great explorers synthesizes and discusses the implications of his combined studies and travels supporting the diffusionist perspective of the global spread of early man. Drawing on the Ra and Kon-Tiki experiences and on his vast knowledge of early civilization and oceanography. Heyerdahl hypothesizes on such topics as the early settlers of South and Central America and th...

[Thor Heyerdahl] wrote a book about a raft which will not soon be forgotten. It is unreasonable to expect an equal success when the same gifts are employed in the same way on a subject involving, much more than mere adventure, a difficult and intricate scientific experiment. [Aku-Aku] brings home a brilliant outline of Easter Island and its present inhabitants. It closes with a whimsical dialogue between the author and his aku-aku [guardian spirit], concerning the relation between archaeological fact and sp...

[In The Ra Expeditions Heyerdahl's] narrative—and some of his more provocative theories as well—unfold with deceptive ease. The book is an effortless read and has an old-fashioned adventure story quality that sweeps it along as inexorably as the ocean currents which Heyerdahl believes were the conveyor belts of world culture. Anyone who enjoyed the vicarious thrill of riding them in a balsa raft, will take nostalgic pleasure in this papyrus venture, the cruise of the "paper boat....

Heyerdahl's latest book, "Sea Routes to Polynesia," is a collection of papers and addresses from the years 1951–1964, most of which were delivered before international scientific societies throughout the world. For the most part, they either amplify, or give further evidence in support of, the conclusions reached in ["Kon-Tiki" and "Aku-Aku"]. Thus their interest for the general reader will depend upon how enthusiastically he felt about these books. (p...