I've Been Gone Far Too Long: Field Study Fiascoes and Expedition Disasters

The ultimate in armchair travel, this sequel to I Should Have Stayed Home is rife with flamboyant animals, culturally rich tribes and bungling Western anthropologists, biologists and doctors. Twenty-one of the last group contributed their hilarious misadventures here: an anthropologist working in Kenya without her husband turns down the native women's kind offers to share theirs. A sick doctor in Peru endures a local remedy involving a cactus, a fork and notebook paper. A biologist in the African savanna watches a playful elephant toss her Land Rover around. A plant ecologist on Mount Kenya realizes that hyraxes (relatives of the elephant, but the size of woodchucks) have taught themselves how to maneuver the zippers on his tent to get to his stash of cookies. And everyone has a story about the snakes that constantly sink their fangs into hapless humans. (""Unfortunately,"" writes one jaded doctor on an African game reserve who saw his share of hysterical humans bitten by harmless amphibians, ""on the rare occasions that victims of dangerous snakes were brought to the hospital, our antiserum had always expired."") Gone Too Long is the perfect way to explore without getting bitten. (Jan.) FYI: Author royalties will be donated to the Wildlife Conservation Society and Cultural Survival.