Drawing on history, literature, art, anthropology, biology and earth science, Island explores the human settlement of islands--including the seafaring skill required to cross the seas--and describes in vivid detail the spectacular flora and fauna of islands, as well as their earth-shattering geology. It shows that ever since humans have been traveling and telling tales, they have been fascinated by islands. Creation stories around the world speak of land rising out of the water, of islands beginning on the back of turtles or by the ingenuity of birds, and there are many literary island encounters, from Noah to Prospero and Gulliver, and from Ulysses to Robinson Crusoe and Anne of Green Gables. In real life, too, sailors and settlers, explorers and scientists, pirates and artists, have all been drawn to islands. The story of islands is also the story of our planet, from its beginning as an island in space to the contemporary appearance and disappearance of islands in the cycles of climate change and seismic upheavals. One thing is certain: large or small, flat or mountainous, barren or beautiful, far out at sea or close to shore, islands are a central part of the world we live in. And since so many of our thoughts and feelings have an island counterpart, they may well define what it is to be human.