I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson (Kodansha Globe)

by Osa Johnson, Martin Johnson, Philip Turner

Release Date: August, 1997

Edition: Paperback

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The Best TRUE Adventure I've Ever Read

I first read "I Married Adventure" when I took this book out of my local library as a student. It fascinated me. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it to still be available.

Martin and Osa Johnson lived what they wrote. There is no pretense in their lives. They were true adventurers. They made a great contribution to the world of adventure. I'm sure they inspired many to further their boundaries.

This is an adventure that will cause you to hold your breath while reading, wondering how they got through.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to live outside their border. It's breathtaking!

Read this 20 years ago as a young adult, GREAT period Bio.

Thanks to Kodansha for republishing this book. I bought it second- or third-hand twenty years ago as a young adult, and lost it in a house fire two years later. I�ve been scrounging used book stores for it ever since. This book has often been in my mind over the years as a story of a determined young woman who followed her own dreams and found, in her husband, a friend who shared her ideas. If you have an interest in history from the first quarter of this century, photography, airplanes, anthropology, wildlife, Africa, headhunters, or just enjoy love stories -- you will find this a fascinating read. I heartily recommend it as a book about the role women had in the exploration of the world early in this century. Amelia Earhart didn�t go half the places Osa did: she just had better press. The path that an average, turn-of-the-century woman takes from the ribbons and ruffles of her little-girl days to the pith helmets, rogue elephants, and head hunters that filled her life as a young bride is astounding. I believe that even if Osa had never met Martin Johnson, we would still be reading about her accomplishments today. What happens to them in their travels around the world will hardly be believed by today�s young readers. This was a time when there were still undocumented civilizations, fantastic �unseen� lands, and undiscovered creatures. Film cameras were turned by a hand crank at just so many revolutions per minute or the film was ruined. Precious film could be ruined by heat, fungus or moisture. Often, first-encounter footage was ruined due to spoiled developing chemicals, or was lost in the scramble to leave an island before the Johnson couple became the main course at the next party. This couple defined the �travelogue" format in a time before talkies. They are the cinegraphic ancestors to Jacque Cousteau and to shows such as Omaha�s Wild Kingdom, National Geographic Specials, and Nature. Osa writes of a time in history that few of us today can imagine. Please, let her show you our world, as she saw it for the first time.