- Hardcover: 300 pages
- Publisher: Antique Collectors' Club Ltd (1 Jan 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1851493719
- ISBN-13: 978-1851493715
- Product Dimensions: 27.6 x 21.6 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
599,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #42 in Books > History > Countries & Regions > Asia > China > Tibet
- #72 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Animal Sciences > Habitats > Desert
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Product Description
Product Description
A new, fully-illustrated edition designed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of this classic account of botanical exploration in Tibet in 1924-5. Little explored and virtually inaccessible, the Tsangpo Gorge in south-east Tibet is the world's deepest. Through it twists the Yarlong Tsangpo, Tibet's great river, emerging far below on the plains of India. This is the story of its exploration and the flora and fauna found there.
About the Author
Original text by Frank Kingdon Ward, edited by Kenneth Cox. Additional material by Kenneth Cox, Ken Storm Jr. and Ian Baker Kenneth Cox, from a family of writers, plant hunters, nurserymen and world experts on rhododendrons, runs the family horticultural business in Scotland. He has travelled extensively and led two expeditions to Yunnan, China, and five to Tibet in search of plants. Kenneth R. Storm, Jr. has explored Mexican gorges, the Colorado Plateau, the Green and Colorado Rivers, the western Himalayan region of Ladakh and has made five journeys to the Tsangpo gorges. Ian Baker has written extensively on the art and culture of Tibet and the Himalayas. He has made eight expeditions into the region of the Tsangpo gorges following pilgrimage routes described in ancient Tibetan texts.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I met Kenneth Cox and Ken Storm at the book launch at Hillier's arboretum. Kenneth has seen through his vision (to republish this book) in spades. He and the rest of the team have added 600 brand new colour photographs of the plants and scenery which Frank Kingdon-Ward describes so eloquently in the original narrative. They have each added a chapter with their own unique angle on the story and they prove that the age of exploration is not dead. The only significant alteration to the original text is to remove the comments made which in a Victorian/Edwardian context were normal but could be be percieved as racist/offensive when viewed from a modern perspective. Kenneth Cox might be a worthy successor to Frank if he were not busy being a worthy successor to his own grandfather Euan Cox and his father Peter Cox both fine plant hunters in their own right. Ken Storm along with Ian Baker, have reached, in 1998, the Waterfalls which Frank set out to find in 1924. I know from reading a great many of his writings that he would have had nothing but praise and congratulations for their success. Jealousy was not something he ever had time for. Buy this book Read this book. The original sells for as much as $1,800 (£1250) All of Kingdon-Ward's excellent books are rare out of print works which sell for high prices and if you buy this one in quantity we will see the others come back for young future explorers and botanists to have their appetites whetted. Search for "kingdon-ward" on google for a biography on the "last of the great plant hunters"
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the book I have been waiting for: it is a beautiful book to look at and, of course, a pleasure to read. While most of Frank Kindon Ward's books are out-of-print for decades, the only reprints I could get had none of FKW's photographs, although all the text was there. Here is the text with original B/W photos and new colour illustrations of plants and landscape relating to the text. I often yearned for illustration of the plants and wished for just this volume. One might hope there will be more.
There is a potted biography of FKW by his widow, and new material about areas not explored by FKW. If you are interested in Plant Hunters and their exploits, the books of Frank Kingdon Ward (and Reginald Farrer) are well worth reading, and you could do much worse than start with this book.
There is a potted biography of FKW by his widow, and new material about areas not explored by FKW. If you are interested in Plant Hunters and their exploits, the books of Frank Kingdon Ward (and Reginald Farrer) are well worth reading, and you could do much worse than start with this book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A must-read sequel to Kingdon Ward's original
22 Aug 2002
Format:Hardcover
In a world where almost everywhere has been explored, it is exciting to read about the world's deepest ravine, almost inaccessible, full of vigin forest, strange plants, and animals, and still not fully explored either by Chinese or Westerners. Frank Kingdon Ward explored it in the 1920s, in what was then Tibet, leaving a stretch of several miles unknown to all but the local tribes. His original book is reproduced as the core of the present one (with some editing of his words to remove comments that would today be viewed as unacceptably racist). There are also accounts of earlier explorations of the region, including the wild borderlands of India to the south, choked by subtropical forests and then populated with violent tribes (this border region is still disputed by China and India). Kingdon Ward was a botanist, focusing on the plant life of the gorge, whereas the new book gives accounts by modern explorers and covers additional aspects, such as Tibetan religion. There are some fascinating photographs: black and white ones by Kingdon Ward and modern color ones. Two I particularly like are the same view of mountains and old-growth forest taken from a cave where Kingdon Ward camped in the 1920s. One is Kingdon Ward's photograph, and the other is taken some 75 years later, with individual trees grown larger, a large glacier melted away, and the treeline higher up the mountains. Recent, separate expeditions by Western and Chinese teams in the 1990s have shrunk the unexplored stretch of the gorge to about three miles. The discoveries of the Westerners are described and illustrated in the book, including a "new" waterfall. Unfortunately, though, politics make an unwelcome intrusion at the end of the story.
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