[.ca] I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson (ISBN 1568361289)

From Amazon.com:
Osa Johnson's travel adventures and explorations come across as vibrantly today as they did when they were written in 1940. They're richer now with the added perspective of history, and the added wealth of Martin Johnson's photographs of charging elephants, reposing lions, and head hunters roasting heads, marshmallow-like, over a campfire. The life the Johnsons led was nothing like the life Osa expected. From 1917 to 1937 she and Martin were visiting and filming cannibals in the New Hebrides, orangutans in Borneo, and the rich gamut of wildlife available on safari in Kenya and the Congo. Osa led a life the likes of which won't be seen again, and she tells a good story, too.

The Best TRUE Adventure I've Ever Read:
I first read "I Married Adventure" when I took this book out of my local library as a student. It fascinated me. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it to still be available. Martin and Osa Johnson lived what they wrote. There is no pretense in their lives. They were true adventurers. They made a great contribution to the world of adventure. I'm sure they inspired many to further their boundaries. This is an adventure that will cause you to hold your breath while reading, wondering how they got through. I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to live outside their border. It's breathtaking!

Marvelous, despite its weaknesses:
Martin and Osa lived exceptional lives, of a sort that can't really be lived today. The strength of the book is that it is Osa's first-person narrative. This is someone who was really there. And the Johnsons do some amazing things together. The book keeps moving at a fast pace, the adventures keep coming, and I didn't want it to end. The book is a window into a very different era. The Johnsons were products of their time, and some of their viewpoints will bother a few readers. They were not bigots, and in fact appear to me to be rather enlightened for the time, but some of her descriptions of native peoples seem slightly condescending. I may be reading something that isn't there. Some of their practices while exploring and photographing new places would now be totally unacceptable--Stirring up inoffensive animals to get some action for the cameras, or casually introducing an alien plant (watercress) into Africa. Again, these are products of the views of that day, rather than something to condemn. The book does have some weaknesses: The biggest one is that this is (effectively) "The Authorized Biography". Many problems and difficulties are glossed over. I read in the modern Introduction that Martin continually struggled with health problems during his adventures, but there is no hint of that in the text. Because the book covers so much ground, in many cases the description of their adventures is scanty, and I wanted more detail. And I suspect there's more to the story in some cases. So I am going to find some other books on the Johnsons and try to learn more about them. Perhaps that's the strongest thing to say about the book--That it left me wanting to know more, and inspired to find it out! I'm also going to visit the museum in Kansas dedicated to their work.

I married adventure:
I read this book as a 12 year old and have always remembered the excitment it stirred in me to live my own adventure! A very good book. The pictures are a lot of fun and the story unforgetable.

A waste of my time!:
Based on the other reveiws, I was expecting a much better time. This book dragged on. If I wasn't reading it for a book club, I would have dropped it early on. I found their attitudes towards natives condescending at best, and their treatment of the animals they professed to love, admire and respect was atrocious! "We wanted to present footage of these magnificent animals in their own habitat with their natural behaviours, so Martin stampeded them towards the camera, and Osa shot them dead after we got our good footage" One also gets the feeling that the truly interesting parts of their lives didn't make it into this book, because the recited 'adventures' are pretty boring.

A fun, enjoyable book:
This would be excellent for an adolescent or teenager, and is pretty good for adults, too. Osa Johnson describes the many adventures of herself and her husband in a "gosh, golly, gee whiz" fashion. In some ways, it seems like an old movie with, say, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in the starring roles. While Osa Johnson does well describing their amazing trips, her weakness is in describing people. Many of the characters in this book come across only as caricatures -- the crusty sea captain, the gentlemanly british national living in Kenya, the faithful-but-slightly-comical African servant. This isn't a book where you get inside the heads of people. Still the Johnsons had remarkable adventures, and since any one of the trips probably could have been a book in itself, you'll likely be left wishing for more details. Also, the book offers an interesting historical perspective on a period (not that long ago) when the world still had many mysterious places to be explored.