Rating: 
Summary: More than just a dose of crazy derring-do
Review: "Hold the Enlightenment" packs heaps of fun into 31 humorous essays. The author, Tim Cahill, displays a talent for free-spirited travel writing. And he does so without the cynicism that darkens the work of some of his peers.Cahill's adventures take him to the four corners of the world: Africa, South America, Mexico, the mountains near his home in Montana. The essays cover a lot of ground. In addition, Cahill couples a keen storytelling ability with a helpful dash of research. This provides interesting background material for the landscapes and the cultures that he visits. In the introduction, Cahill claims that he's not trying to be funny when he writes. Yeah, right. He's definitely trying to be funny (unless he's become so good at it that he doesn't have to try anymore). The results are there to enjoy. But the best stories combine humor with more serious issues. These are the essays that demonstrate Cahill's versatility--and maturity--as a writer. And they also make "Hold the Enlightenment" a pleasant surprise for those hoping for more than another book of crazy derring-do.
Rating:
Summary: Travel Adventure With Moral Purpose
Review: Engaging stories that allow readers to have adventures without leaving their easy chair, but that generally contain messages about the wonders of nature and our obligation not to destroy it. There are clear heros and villians in Cahill's world, and his comic quips and foibles notwithsatnding, he makes a good case for what he is so passionate about.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyman's Guide
Review: Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves, here, folks. Deep down, we are all Tim Cahill - slightly pudgy, kind of geeky, and always a fish out of water when we travel. Not a single one of us can go anywhere in this world and immediately blend in, feel comfortable, look natural. It's impossible and while some of like to pretend that we are jet-setters, globe-trotters, and travel afficianados, the fact of the matter is that we're usually ignorant of the cultures we visit, the places we see, and the historical importance of the lands we visit. There's nothing wrong with that and Mr. Cahill proves that our ignorance can lead to enlightenment, adventure, and humor - albeit at our own expense.
Mr. Cahill has made a career of poking fun at himself in a way that's self-depreciating but allows his readers to develop and foster an unwavering respect for this man and his persepctive on the world - which I think is a common sense approach to people and places. But more importantly, you like the author. You feel you can call him Tim, meet him at a bar in Montana, throw back a few beers, and tell each other wild stories and blatant lies. He's that engaging, friendly, and comfortable in his style.
Being an avid reader of this type of travel lit., I've read many different authors who all try to emulate Tim in one way or another. But unlike his peers (Bill Bryson, for example) his humor is light-hearted and not caustic or sarcastic. And more importantly, when he does have an opinion about an issue his touch is light and simple - there are no vitriolic diatribes against a developer or policy.
Don't think for one second, though, that he can't turn around and whip off a piece that will leave you in a blubbering mess of tears. I read 'Enlightenment' in one sitting - sure, it was a long sitting, but one single one - at a local coffee shop. I got a plethora of stares and strange looks as I guffawed my way through it. The looks doubled when I finished the book in tears and sat there drying my eyes with a coffee-stained napkin.
No exaggerations here, this book will have you in hysterics one moment and tears the next. Buy this. Read this. Treasure this.
Rating:
Summary: A modern day explorer.
Review: Many of the tales in this book were fascinating and funny but some were too short or unclear or just not interesting. Tim Cahill travels in a real way and grabs hold of the customs and food of the places he finds himself. Actually it is hard to imagine how he has survived this long, though he has had some scrapes along the way. It is fascinating that in Cahill's view, the bravest thing he has done is "appearing on one silly, unaired television show". Tim Cahill is one of the modern day explorers who is documenting the amazing diversity of cultures in this world and for that, this book is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: A modern day explorer.
Review: Many of the tales in this book were fascinating and funny but some were too short or unclear or just not interesting. Tim Cahill travels in a real way and grabs hold of the customs and food of the places he finds himself. Actually it is hard to imagine how he has survived this long, though he has had some scrapes along the way. It is fascinating that in Cahill's view, the bravest thing he has done is "appearing on one silly, unaired television show". Tim Cahill is one of the modern day explorers who is documenting the amazing diversity of cultures in this world and for that, this book is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightened adventure
Review: My favorite travel books are those that whisk me away to adventures I have no desire to experience first hand; the solitary bike trips of Dervla Murphy, for instance, or Tahir Shah's explorations of Indian magic and Amazonian flight. Tim Cahill, self-described (and humorously self-deprecating) adventurer, fits that bill perfectly with his far-flung expeditions dodging bandits across the Sahara to tour the salt mines, swimming with Great White Sharks off South Africa, touring the guerilla lands of Columbia with Robert Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places," and, on assignment, taking a yoga retreat in Jamaica (now that sounds like something I could do). But Cahill's ("Pass the Butterworms," "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh") essays are never just about the adventure. In his introduction Cahill calls these stories "a representative sampling of my life" ("What can I say? I have a low threshold of boredom...") and adds, "if there is any organizing principle at work here it is emotional." Encounters with people who live or work in the out-of-the-way places he visits provide depth and interest. Cahill is a thoughtful as well as irreverent writer. His "Search for the Caspian Tiger" in the mountains separating Turkey and Iraq is as much a portrait of his companion, war correspondent Thomas Goltz, and his bizarre trip to Columbia, "hands down, the most dangerous destination we could have chosen in the Western Hemisphere," is really a portrait of Pelton. There are forays into his own life, from adolescent stunts to the death of his first wife and his own near crippling injury, brought about by a bout of stupidity that could happen to hardly anyone. He muses on writing and teaching and hurting people's feelings. Poignancy and laughter coexist in fluid and jarring ways. Along with his habitual irreverence, Cahill has a fine appreciation of irony and the absurd. Take the wild and pristine stretch along the Columbia river still "very much as it had been when Lewis and Clark camped nearby in 1805," a place where new species of flora and fauna are being discovered, a place where wildlife thrives - kept that way because of the off-limits presence of the hemisphere's largest repository of nuclear waste, the Hanford Site. An adroit piece on dolphins skewers the human penchant for idealizing certain (usually cute) creatures. And enlightenment arrives - by way of a half pound centipede dropping on one's sleeping chest or while guzzling a warm beer on a horrifically crowded Congo barge ("like trying to drink beer on the subway at rush hour") or while touring erupting Italian volcanoes - as it must. A fine, funny, thoughtful and varied collection.
Rating:
Summary: Cahill. Enough Said.
Review: This book is standard Tim Cahill - and, if you read travel or adventure writing at all, you know that standard Cahill is pretty darn wonderful. Hold the Enlightment is one of Cahill's better books to date - it doesn't quite match Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, but it's substantially better than, for example, Pass the Butterworms; it's Cahill's first collection since Jaguars that doesn't have a scattershot feel to it. Hold the Enlightenment does have a few weaknesses. First, it seems quite a bit shorter than his previous collections - a straight pagination comparison is, of course, pointless, but this book certainly seems shorter. Also, a few of the articles are reprints (and a few more look like reprints, but are actually revisits - e.g., he has another look at Bali and the entranced duck); by reprints, I mean that they've appeared in another collection of his. In a book that is already slightly short on content, it seems doubly unfair to include articles that have appeared in other books. However, there's still plenty in this book that's original, and plenty to interest any reader. But there's a more pernicious problem in Hold the Enlightenment. As I said, the essays here are all typical Cahill. This has a down side - it seems, in places, that Cahill is becoming a sort of caricature of himself; his style is now a distillation of the most popular pieces of Cahill past. This is quite noticeable in Hold the Enlightenment. His other collections all feature several atypical articles - lengthy, serious pieces, for example. This one does not. Those who treasure Cahill solely for his humor will be delighted by this, of course, but those who enjoy his writing in all forms will miss the deeper pieces. Still, this book is well worth the purchase price for fans of Cahill, or for lovers of travel and adventure writing in general. If you've never read a book or article by Tim Cahill, you could certainly start here - and if you've read everything else Cahill's written, you'll definitely want this one, too.
Rating:
Summary: Cahill. Enough Said.
Review: This book is standard Tim Cahill - and, if you read travel or adventure writing at all, you know that standard Cahill is pretty darn wonderful. Hold the Enlightment is one of Cahill's better books to date - it doesn't quite match Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, but it's substantially better than, for example, Pass the Butterworms; it's Cahill's first collection since Jaguars that doesn't have a scattershot feel to it. Hold the Enlightenment does have a few weaknesses. First, it seems quite a bit shorter than his previous collections - a straight pagination comparison is, of course, pointless, but this book certainly seems shorter. Also, a few of the articles are reprints (and a few more look like reprints, but are actually revisits - e.g., he has another look at Bali and the entranced duck); by reprints, I mean that they've appeared in another collection of his. In a book that is already slightly short on content, it seems doubly unfair to include articles that have appeared in other books. However, there's still plenty in this book that's original, and plenty to interest any reader. But there's a more pernicious problem in Hold the Enlightenment. As I said, the essays here are all typical Cahill. This has a down side - it seems, in places, that Cahill is becoming a sort of caricature of himself; his style is now a distillation of the most popular pieces of Cahill past. This is quite noticeable in Hold the Enlightenment. His other collections all feature several atypical articles - lengthy, serious pieces, for example. This one does not. Those who treasure Cahill solely for his humor will be delighted by this, of course, but those who enjoy his writing in all forms will miss the deeper pieces. Still, this book is well worth the purchase price for fans of Cahill, or for lovers of travel and adventure writing in general. If you've never read a book or article by Tim Cahill, you could certainly start here - and if you've read everything else Cahill's written, you'll definitely want this one, too.
Rating:
Summary: Out Looking for Trouble
Review: This is not a quest for enlightenment, as the title says. Tim Cahill doesn't bore you with touristy descriptions of scenery and high culture that you get from the more button-down travel writers, but diaries of everything that goes wrong with world travel. In Cahill's case this can range from the comical to the disgusting to the downright dangerous. He's not a comedy writer, as some think, but uses humor effectively at key points in his writing to drive his accumulated insights home. Otherwise he is very perceptive and even serious when the situation demands it. This is a loose collection of essays from locations ranging from remote and dangerous third-world hellholes to American commercial adventure destinations. The writings are delivered with a lot of humble pie, which is Cahill's secret weapon. A funny example is when he compares himself to a platypus: "so strange, so different from the rest, so inherently dorky as to be unclassifiable by science." I can identify with that. Some winning essays here, among many, include a trip to a town in Ecuador on the verge of demolition by a volcano, and examinations of the true personalities of gorillas and dolphins. Another winning collection from Cahill, in which he proves that enlightenment is not the travel writer's friend. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating: 
Summary: Unenlightening -
Review: Well written, sometimes funny, but overall lacking! His earlier books are far more humorous. He seems to be straining to write this - maybe some more yoga Tim! JL
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