Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for The Last Island by Adam Goodheart - Available

The Last Island

Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth

by Adam Goodheart
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available

"A deft combination of adventure, history, reportage and elegy."—Washington Post
A journey to the coast of North Sentinel Island, home to a tribe believed to be the most isolated human community on earth. The Sentinelese people want to be left alone and will shoot deadly arrows at anyone who tries to come ashore. As the web of modernity draws ever closer, the island represents the last chapter in the Age of Discovery—the final holdout in a completely connected world.
In November 2018, a zealous American missionary was killed while attempting to visit an island he called "Satan's last stronghold," a small patch of land known as North Sentinel in the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean. News of the tragedy fascinated people around the world. Most were unaware such a place still existed in our time: an island unmolested by the advances of modern technology.
Twenty years before the American missionary's ill-fated visit, a young American historian and journalist named Adam Goodheart also traveled to the waters off North Sentinel. During his time in the Andaman Islands he witnessed another isolated tribe emerge into modernity for the first time.
Now, Goodheart—a bestselling historian—has returned to the Andamans. The Last Island is a work of history as well as travel, a journey in time as well as place. It tells the stories of others drawn to North Sentinel's mystery through the centuries, from imperial adventurers to an eccentric Victorian photographer to modern-day anthropologists. It narrates the tragic stories of other Andaman tribes' encounters with the outside world. And it shows how the web of modernity is drawing ever closer to the island's shores.
The Last Island is a beautifully written meditation on the end of the Age of Discovery at the start of a new millennium. It is a book that will fascinate any reader interested in the limits—and dangers—of our modern, global society and its emphasis on ceaseless, unbroken connection.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 19, 2023

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781567926842

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781567926842
      • File size: 18829 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from July 15, 2023
      A study of the Indigenous peoples on an island that "has almost wholly eluded" the outside world. In this compelling account, Goodheart, author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening, takes readers to the Andaman Islands, a remote Indian archipelago located in the Bay of Bengal. The inhabitants of these islands lived largely in isolation prior to the establishment of a British penal colony in 1858, unsurprisingly bringing with them a series of epidemics to the Native peoples. Goodheart focuses on North Sentinel Island, located at the southwestern tip of the archipelago, whose hunter-gatherer inhabitants have been particularly resistant to outsider interference and are often mistaken for cannibals. While the origins of the Sentinelese are unclear, their branch of the human species remained separate from others for perhaps 50,000 years. In 2018, North Sentinel Island drew the attention of the world following the death of John Chau, an American missionary who was killed by the Sentinelese when he visited the island in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. Goodheart recounts stories of individuals who have been drawn to the Andaman Islands as well as stories from his own two expeditions. He reveals disturbing details about the 1879 visit by Maurice Vidal Portman, replete with images that Portman captured. According to his diaries, Portman admitted his efforts to befriend the Sentinelese were unsuccessful and had in fact "increase[ed] their general terror of, and hostility to, all comers." Goodheart ably captures the mystery of the place. "When I started thinking about North Sentinel Island," he writes, "I saw it as a place somehow exempt from this conception of time, a place that both was history and also lay outside history." Nonetheless, time has taken a toll: In 1858, the population of the Andaman Islands was estimated to be roughly 5,000. By 1931, it was 460, with the Sentinelese perhaps numbering "fifty souls." A thrilling book that will leave you contemplating the concept of civilization.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading