Naked and Marooned

Written by Ed Stafford

Narrated by Jonathan Cowley

Ed Stafford-adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River-likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for sixty days equipped with nothing-no food, water, or even clothing-except the video cameras he would use to document his time. Detailing Stafford's jaw-dropping sojourn on the island of Olourua, Naked and Marooned is a tale of unparalleled adventure and of one man's will to push himself to the outer limits-and survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781494571443

Ed Stafford

Ed Stafford is the first person ever to walk the Amazon River from source to sea. Since completing that feat in 2010 he has undertaken deadly challenges around the globe. These include being marooned on a desert island, crossing the world’s hottest desert on foot and navigating his way through jungle where no human has set foot before. His exploits have been captured in five highly-successful Discovery Channel series.

Reviews for Naked and Marooned

[librarycin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author decided he wanted to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific (I believe in Fiji) for 60 days with nothing, including no clothes! Now, because he got a tv deal, he did have to take a camera and microphone, and there were daily “checks” (via note), if needed; also the drop place for the notes was also meant to replenish batteries. The notes were not to include anything to motivate. This was interesting. I listened to the audio, though, so as is often the case, I did lose interest at times. I had a real hard time listening to how he hunted and killed, though. (Even the tv show did not air one of his (more brutal) kills.) The book not only looked at how he survived, but also he reflected on his mental state being so isolated.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ed Stafford, following up on his previous ordeal of spending two years walking the entire length of the Amazon river, spends sixty days alone on a small island with no supplies or even clothing. (Well, unless you count the cameras he used to film it for TV, of course.) His stated goal was not just to survive, but to thrive, building shelters and hunting animals. Which he more or less succeeded in, although he ran into a lot of difficulties and generally didn't seem to enjoy the experience.Despite the reality-TV-stunt feel to the whole thing, there's something irresistible about this idea. Who doesn't love a good desert island survival story? Unfortunately, Stafford's story was never quite as engaging as it felt like it ought to be. While some of the details of how he lived on the island are interesting, he spends a lot of time thinking and talking about his own mental state, rather than about the island and its external challenges, and while that also seems like it could be really interesting, it mostly comes across as a lot of whiny self-recrimination, usually over things that seem perfectly understandable in the circumstances. I feel a little bad saying that, especially after reading the epilogue, in which he talks about lingering psychological problems he experienced as a result of this period of prolonged isolation, but, well... it does.And even the survival story aspect of things is... not a particularly pure experience. It turns out that mostly he was able to get along because he was able to make use of trash washed up on the shore or left behind by previous visitors to the island. (Plastic bottles to store water, cans to cook in, bits of metal to sharpen into cutting tools, and so on.) I don't remotely begrudge him for using whatever he could find, but it sort of makes the whole thing feel less like an exciting primitive adventure and more like a sad reflection of the fact that nowhere is untouched by human trash.Rating: 3/5. Although I admit that the above probably sounds more negative than that.

[thelostentwife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's only natural that since I am fascinated by survival stories in fiction that I should also look to some crazy real-life stories. That's exactly what caught my eye when I saw Ed Stafford's book. NAKED AND MAROONED is a heck of a title and a little bit of marketing genius. Who could pass something like that up? Then, upon further reading, I noticed that he spent his time in the South Pacific and, given my recent time spent in the Pacific, I had to know what it was like.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Sept. 14, 2014.