"Passionate biography ... [with] scrupulous footnotes" --The Guardian, 13 April 2002

"Delightful and superbly researched" --Sunday Times, 14 April 2002

"The best biography that I have read in years" --Time Out London, 17-24 April 2002

"[A] compelling, richly researched, love-hate biography" --The Mail on Sunday, 28 April 2002

"Whatever you come to think of Harrisson, Heimann has written a fascinating book in her portrayal of him. Harrisson worked hard at being a classic colonial 'character', and his doings are material for a Boy's Own tale of the most lurid stripe. Heimann makes the most of it, and entertains us magnificently." --New Straits Times

"Explorer, museum curator, guerilla fighter, pioneer sociologist, documentary filmmaker, anthropologist - Tom Harrisson was all these things. He was also arrogant, choleric, swashbuckling, often drunk and nearly always deliberately outrageous. In spite of these contradictions, he became a key figure in every enterprise he undertook. Judith Heimann describes how he did so. A brilliant and insightful biography." --David Attenborough

"Judith Heimann has taken on the challenge of exploring the many lives of Tom Harrisson and has come up with an unusual and richly textured biography. Like Heimann, I met Harrisson many years ago in Borneo, and there he is in these pages, in his full controversial glory, digging into ethnology, ornithology, anthropology. Harrisson once asked whether before he died he could achieve 'that youthful promise of semi-genius.' Heimann checks it out in revealing detail; her findings add up to a roller-coaster story of an unconventional man who embraced the natural world with the enthusiasm of an Alfred Russel Wallace." --Bernard Kalb

"Heimann's mesmerizing accounts of Harrisson's wartime exploits reads like an international thriller ... As a protector of, and advocate for, indigenous peoples, at odds with traditional anthropologists, Harrisson emerges in this engrossing bio as a forerunner of the contemporary movement to preserve local cultures and ecosystems." --Publisher's Weekly, 11/29/99

"A pleasure to read as pure biography, this text should also prove useful to anyone interested in the histories of opinion research or the ethnography of Southeast Asia." --Library Journal, 12/99

"Ultimately, this hard-driving, hard-thinking, hard-drinking egomaniac bucking the system is a deeply flawed but brilliant protagonist--and one that anyone who delves into this book won't soon forget." --Booklist, 11/15/99

"This biography is definitely targeted for specialized audiences.... Yet it is an impressive work." --Foreign Service Journal, May 2000

"The book is readable, indeed exciting and appealing to a general reader as well as those with interests in any of the sciences of Sarawak and its region.... A delightful surprise." --Historical Records of Australian Science 32 (2001)

"Recommended wholeheartedly" --Asian Affairs, October 2000

"Very accurate, well-written and enjoyable" --Asian Perspectives 39 (2000) (Read full review)

An English eccentric and adventurer, Tom Harrisson (1911-1976) sought knowledge and renown in a dizzying number of fields, while breaking most of the rules of civilized society. He was a precursor in the field of modern market research; he won the DSO for his World War II service in Borneo; he led efforts to save the orangutan, the green sea turtle, and other endangered species; he discovered the oldest modern human skull known at the time. This hugely enjoyable story of Harrisson's extravagant, controversial life offers a sympathetic and insightful look at a charismatic figure who offended as many people as he impressed at the twilight of colonialism on the fringes of the British empire.

Judith M. Heimann has spent much of her life in Western Europe and Southeast Asia, as a diplomat's wife and a diplomat herself. She first met Tom Harrisson while living in Borneo. Heimann spent a decade researching Harrisson's life, sifting through countless stories and rumors and traveling to four continents in the process.

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