This month in book club we’re reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  If you have a comment on the book, leave it here, and better yet join us on 2/23/14 at 2PM at Arden Dimick Library in Sacramento for a book discussion and movie screening!

Douglas Adams is most famous for the Hitchhiker’s Series, but his favorite book was Last Chance to See.  In this nonfiction work, Adams traveled the world with Mark Carwardine (a zoologist) in search of endangered species.  The book accompanied a BBC radio documentary about their travels.

Adams and Carwardine

Carwardine said, “We put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere he fancied going, I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were, and we made a journey out of every place that had two pins”.

Twenty years later, Mark took Adams’ friend, comedian Stephen Fry, on a second trip to see how the endangered species were doing.  This TV documentary (also called Last Chance to See) can be found, among other places, at the Sacramento Public Library.

Adams did not confine his environmental efforts to Last Chance to See.  He was particularly active with the organization Save The Rhino.  In 1994, Adams participated in a hike up Mount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino suit to raise money for the organization.  The organization hosts a yearly lecture by prominent scientists in memory of Douglas Adams’ work.

Here’s Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine sharing some memories of Douglas Adams, the birth of Last Chance to See and it’s impact on Adams, and some footage of Adams in the rhino suit: