Amazing Islands: 100+ Places That Will Boggle Your Mind

Some islands are huge, like Greenland, which is a whopping 2,166,000 square kilometres in size. Some are so tiny that they might never have existed at all, like Sandy Island, sighted by Captain Cook in 1774, which scientists couldn’t find in 2012. Some bigger islands are also in danger of disappearing  – Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean is under threat from rising sea levels. If climate change continues to cause glaciers to melt, 100,000 people that live there on 33 atholls (small islands) will have to leave.

Many famous places that sound like one place, like Venice and the Philippines, are actually a number of islands: Venice is built on 118 islands that are linked together by more than 400 bridges, and the Philippines comprises over 7,600 islands, with 2,000 of them inhabited.

Spanning prison islands, river islands, barrier islands, mystery islands (like Fadiouth in Senegal, which is made entirely from shells), island cultures and many, many other fascinating topics, Weiss and Hyndman’s colourful, stylish book is full to the brim with fascinating facts.