"The voyage of Kon-Tiki just two decades ago was one of the great true adventures of our century. For its daring leader, Thor Heyderahl, this expedition was the turning point of a life already crowded with excitement. Now, overnight, he was an international celebrity-- but a man half-obscured by the shadow of his own achievement. Millions new his name, but few knew the man behind the voyage. In this definitive biography, Arnold Jacoby focuses on that man. He tells of Heyerdahl's boyhood youth, of the experimental year when he and his bride returned to nature on a remote Pacific island to see if modern man was better off than primitive man, and of his wartime experiences in the Free Norwegian Army. One theme recurs throughout those years: Heyerdahl's growing conviction that accepted scientific opinion about the origins of the South Sea islanders was incorrect. But his own theories brought only scorn from the scientific community-- until he set out to prove himself right in the only way possible, by recreating the Pacific voyage he knew must once have take place. The Kon-Tiki and subsequent expeditions to Easter Island and the Galapagos won Heyerdahl renown and, perhaps more importantly, scientific respect. The behind-the-scenese stories of these achievements and thier aftermath, are all part of this fascinating book."--inside jacket.

Nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 2013 Academy Awards In English and many other languages the name 'Kon-Tiki' has become a byword for adventure and the exotic. The journey of the Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 1947 became one of the founding myths of the postwar world. In the voyage of six Scandinavians and a parrot on a balsa raft across the Pacific Ocean the classic journey of discovery was re-invented for generations to come. Kon-Tiki spoke of heroism, masculinity, free-spirited rebellion against scientific dogmatism, and the promise of an attainable exotic world, while it updated these mythological staples to fit the times. After years of relentless media exploitation of the 101-day raft journey, Heyerdahl emerged as the protagonist in a legend that helped to create a new postwar West. A Hero for the Atomic Age tells the story of how Heyerdahl organized an expedition to sail a balsa raft from Callao in Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia, and explains how he turned this physical crossing into an epic narrative that became imbued with a universal appeal. The book also addresses, for the first time, the problematic nature of Heyerdahl's theory that a white culture-bearing race had initiated all the world's great civilizations.

Biografie van de Noorse ontdekkingsreiziger Thor Heyerdahl (1914- ).

An archival delve into the remarkable life, expeditions and voyages of Thor Heyerdahl, author of the bestselling adventure classic The Kon-Tiki Expedition Norwegian archaeologist, anthropologist, migration theorist, author and explorer Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) spent decades substantiating unorthodox migration theories, with equally unconventional research methodologies: namely, practicable experiments that employed the construction of ancient vessels, driven across open oceans and waterways to retrace the movement and settlements of our ancestors. With October 2022 commemorating the 75th anniversary of Thor Heyerdahl's extraordinary 1947 voyage upon a balsa-wood raft, Kon-Tiki, from coastal South America to Polynesia across the Pacific Ocean, an enviable opportunity arises to reexplore Heyerdahl's innovative yet frequently contested theories and expeditions. Afforded unprecedented access to Oslo's Kon-Tiki Museum's extensive Heyerdahl archive, Thor Heyerdahl: Voyages of the Sunassembles a wealth of little-known and previously unseen correspondence, expedition logbooks, journals and photographs. Offering readers new and unexamined narratives from an explorer famed for his radical ideas and vehement rejections of abstracted academic theory, Thor Heyerdahl: Voyages of the Sunreviews the enduring relevance of the explorer's research and assesses it within larger narratives of modern archaeological, anthropological, marine science and migration research; international conservation initiatives; evolving globalization; and essential human-nature symbiosis.