Books with author Thor Heyerdahl

The adventure of Thor Heyerdahl and his companions on their raft the Kon-Tiki has gone down in legend as a feat of endurance and courage. This is that story in his own words. Travelling across the Pacific ocean for 4,340 miles for 101 days on a wooden raft built using skills and materials only available to the pre-conquest Peruvians. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

A young Heyerdahl spent 1936 with his bride, Liv, on Fatu-Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. They wanted to escape civilization & live strictly according to nature. Without medical supplies, they came within inches of losing their lives, but they also found the serenity they were seeking. They built a bamboo cabin & lived off the land, struggling against myriad diseases. They lived to tell of hazardous inter-island voyages, their idyllic month-long stay with the last surviving Polynesian cannibal, their mixed relations with the islanders, their failures & successes in an entirely natural world. Fatu-Hiva was a turning point in Heyerdahl's life. It was there that he began to pick up a trail that would lead to the Kon-Tiki expedition. Ancient stone figures, the presence of such flora as the pineapple & local legends all pointed to an early migration from South America. At the time, this theory was considered outrageous. Heyerdahl would later prove it not only possible, but likely.

Thor Heyerdahl, a biologist working in Marquesa, had heard of a mythical Polnesian hero, Kon-Tiki, who had migrated to the islands from the east, perhaps as far away as Peru. Further investigation by the Norwegian scientist led him to believe that the story of he migration of a people across thousands of miles of the Pacific was fact, not a myth. When his colleagues refused to accept his theory, Heyerdahl decided to prove its accuracy by duplicating the legendary voyage, limiting himself to a blasa log raft and taking along other intrepid adventurers. Kon-Tiki is the records of the extraordinary trip, a tale so filled with excitement, suspense, and outrageous daring that it has been called the greatest saga of the sea of our time.