It wasn't until I was more than a few pages into Through the South Seas with Jack London that I realized who the author was. For Martin Johnson is the Martin Johnson, who, later, with his wife, Osa, would go on expeditions throughout the South Seas and Africa. They would also become noted (notorious?) documentary filmmakers. Alas, in retrospect, they came to be seen as shameless self-promoters who exploited the subjects of their work. The title of one of their films should suffice as illustration, Congorilla (1932), a film given to looking at pygmy life and highlighted as a movie about "big apes and little people."

But that was in the future. Here, Johnson does give a breathless and exciting account of the voyage of Jack London and his wife aboard the Snark, the Londons' 45-foot yacht, from 1907 to 1909. The trip took the core crew to an extended stay in Hawaii and subsequent trips to the Marquesas, where they explored the valley of the Typee, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomons, and Australia.

The style of the book reflects its author, who was always something of a carnival barker underneath it all. Each trip is the "world's most difficult," each storm the "worst in history," and every island in Polynesia "a Garden of Eden," while Melanesia is the "worst spot on earth." Exaggeration and hyperbole are his hallmarks.

Neither is accuracy, historical or otherwise, much of a concern. Either Johnson naively accepted elaborations about the death of Captain Cook as truth or he made up his own version. Too, he either did not realize or perhaps ignored the fact that the Fayaway of Herman Melville's Typee was a creation of fiction. The effect is that the reader is never quite sure about the truth of things as Johnson describes them. Fortunately, the book comes with a large selection of photographs that Johnson took on the voyage, which does illustrate many of his descriptions.

Despite it all, this is a fun read. And the fact is that the voyage was dangerous; the islands were dangerous. Disease and death a distinct possibility. And hardship and isolation existed in a way that modern audiences for the book cannot imagine. ( )