Kon-Tiki (Barnes & Noble Common Reader Editions Series)

Originally published in 1950, Kon-Tiki has earned a place as one of the classic adventure stories of modern times. At last count, Thor Heyerdahl's unforgettable narrative has been translated into sixty-seven languages and has sold more than thirty million copies internationally.

Who could have foreseen such wild success for a book about six men crossing more than 4,000 miles of the Pacific on a balsa log raft, a voyage undertaken in order to float an obscure theory concerning transoceanic contact between the civilizations of South America and Polynesia? Part of the book's immediate and enduring appeal can be traced to its romantic portrayal of scientific investigation: a maverick thinker conceives a theory at odds with accepted wisdom and sets out on a task demanding enormous courage in order to prove its possibility. And yet it is by the adventure itself—one hundred and one days of difficult, dangerous, and exhilarating journeying in the imagined path of stone age seafarers—that the author and his colleagues won the hearts and minds of countless readers. To read Kon-Tiki is to experience, with undimmed wonder, the thrill of endeavor and both the harsh and serene beauties of the natural world.

Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) became world famous in the wake of his 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. His books chronicling later expeditions include Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature, The Ra Expeditions, and Early Man and the Ocean.

"The whole story—from its beginnings in Heyerdahl's theory, through the long voyage and in the experiences after he was ashore—is as great an adventure as it is possible to imagine. That means it's as good as Robinson Crusoe, plus the fact that Kon-Tiki is true."
—Chicago Sun

"This is an enthralling book, and I don't think I can be very far off in calling it the most absorbing sea tale of our time."
—Hamilton Basso, The New Yorker

"This review can easily be written in four words: 'Wow! What a book!' It has spine chilling, nerve tingling, spirit lifting adventure on every page . . . . It is the fiction of a Conrad or a Melville brought to reality. It might be added that the writing is of itself worthy of either pen."
—Chicago Sunday Tribune


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