There should be no need for this book. There should be no need for grown-up people to dress up as emperor penguins to protest against the destruction of Antarctica, or to chain themselves to harpoons on factory whaling ships, or to climb huge industrial smokestacks to draw attention to the problem of acid rain. There should be no need for people to expose themselves to radioactive waste from the Sellafield outflow pipes, or to contaminated sludge pouring from factories into the Mediterranean sea. Greenpeace people, however, have been doing this kind of thing for nearly twenty years. The Greenpeace Story is a pretty shameful report card on our management of this planet. It is remarkable that politicians appear to have got the message only recently.

This account of Greenpeace from its beginnings in Canada in 1970, is a gripping, if devastating read. This is real life adventure; stories from the front line. Of the three founders of Greenpeace, Jim Bohlen was a US Navy veteran who had been in Japan