.com Forget the Michael Crichton book (and Spielberg movie) that copied the title. This is the original: the terror-adventure tale of The Lost World. Writing not long after dinosaurs first invaded the popular imagination, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spins a yarn about an expedition of two scientists, a big-game hunter, and a journalist (the narrator) to a volcanic plateau high over the vast rain forest. The bickering of the professors (a type Doyle knew well from his medical training) serves as witty contrast to the wonders of flora and fauna they encounter, building toward a dramatic moonlit chase scene with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And the character of Professor George E. Challenger is second only to Sherlock Holmes in the outrageous force of his personality: he's a big man with an even bigger ego, and if you can grit your teeth through his racist behavior toward Native Americans, he's a lot of fun.From Publishers WeeklyStarred . In 1912, Doyle took his Victorian readers deep into the South American jungles where, high atop a treacherous plateau, a small band of British explorers encountered a terrifying world of prehistoric creatures long thought lost to the sands of time. The adventurers included a young newspaper reporter, Ed Malone; the swashbuckling aristocrat, Lord Roxton; the skeptical scientist, Professor Summerlee; and the brilliant and bombastic Professor Challenger, who leads the party. Doyle unfolds high adventure at its best with fantastic encounters with pterodactyls, stegosaurs and cunning ape -men. Glen McCready's performance captures the time and tone of Doyle's material perfectly without straying into melodrama. He nicely balances Malone's sense of youthful wonder with the professors' scientific pragmatism, while fully exploiting the humor spread strategically throughout, planting numerous chuckles among the thrills. McCready's entertaining reading more than fulfills the author's introductory wish to give one hour of joy to the boy who's half a man, or the man who's half a boy. (Feb.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.From Library JournalConan Doyle presents one of his favorite characters, outside of Sherlock Holmes: the irascible Professor Challenger. At the tale's outset, Challenger is attempting to convince the London Zoological Institute that he has discovered a plateau in South America that is inhabited by prehistoric creatures. Jeered and ridiculed by the audience, Challenger makes up his mind to prove the existence of this lost world. The Zoological Institute selects a committee of three to attempt to find Challenger's plateau. E.D. Mallone, one of the three, narrates the adventure in a series of journal entries that he plans to mail back to his newspaper along the way. That is, if he manages to survive this garden of sorts where Jurassic Era creatures roam. The Lost World is admirably presented by reader Paul Hecht, whose narration captures the sense of adventure that Conan Doyle so skillfully portrayed. This title is sure to be popular among Conan Doyle's fans as well as folks who enjoyed Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (Knopf, 1990) and its sequel and paean to Conan Doyle, The Lost World (Audio s, LJ 11/15/95).?Theresa Connors, Arkansas Technological Univ., RussellvilleCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. which is the best app to read books The Lost World: Illustrated
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Dinosaurs and a lost world.By Ray WalkerA very engaging bit of fiction. it held my interest right to the end. the story is based on the idea tha in a very remote part of the there was a very highly elevated jungle that was almost impossible to get to. in London one scientist claimed to have achieved the apparently impossible feat of getting there and discovering dinosaurs, petrodactls, etc., but when he left with photos a rver accident destroyed them. his fellow scientists called him a fake. the guts of the book relates both he and one of hi accusers, along with a news reporter and a known spotsman with rifles and ammo, returning[ and then all hell breaks loose.this was written in the 19th century before we learned the fate of dinosaurs 65 million yrs ago. the story is well wriiten anf wiill keep intrerested to the end.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Crichton clones his first bookBy Spenser CalderinThere are some interesting thoughts in this second book and one or two new characters including a stronger female but mostly it is just a retelling of book one. Even the new characters are refinements of old ones. You still have two engineers, a mathematician, a paleontologist, a life scientist, two greedy people and two kids. You still have the same dinos and dino villains. The only new thoughts are on theory and even those are just extensions of ideas in the first book. If that does not bother you, read away, there are some moments of interest.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Better than the movie!By -BranLike the Jurassic Park novel, The Lost World is so much better than the film adaptation Spielberg did. Not only are there more characters, the characters are much more diverse than what you see in the film. You also see the involvement of a dinosaur we've never seen in the movies. It's a shame they were left out.Aspiring scientists may have to read this with an open mind due to its dating(it's an older book and the setting is early 90s on an island not touched since the 80s). However, this should be done with any modern fictional story. Readers who enjoy nonstop action will love it!Like the previous entry in the series, the editors didn't do a very good job proofreading the story. Numerous spelling errors plague the book as well as words that seem to just be thrown in the middle of a sentence out of nowhere. It doesn't stop it from being a solid 4 star read though if you can overlook them.