Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)

This book should become required middle or a least high school reading .... especially with the recent embraceement of bigotry, racism, sexism, xenophobia in America that's been rearing its ugly head with the 2016 elections.

I always get the feeling that Swift unknowingly wrote the first modern science fiction book. The 'other-worldliness' of his destinations described in such an early 18th Century style of prose is captivating and, as was undoubtedly intended, cast a mirror to the society in which the author lived.

When I finished the book I was struck with a profound sense of 'What If'... What might the world be like if the society of 300 years ago had taken stock of its excesses and strived to be less 'Yahoo'... A humbling thought.

I expected a book about travel to exotic places and thought it was only about Lilliput. The story exceeded my expectations by going to several other locations. Guliver's discussions with the local nobility about governance allowed me to learn more about british politics, governance and lifestyle of the time period. The story goes on to spoof modernization for the sake of progress, a danger we can still encounter. Guliver's final realization that life is made of simple pleasures is a good life lesson.

Th author had a vivid imagination, at times the book seemed to long; however it was a good story and very entertaining. I had only seen the story never read it. It was worth reading through, but I ponder what the author wanted the reader to take away from his fictional story.

There have been many reviews regarding this classic so I will focus my review on the Kindle version stating: `with illustrations and maps.'

The illustrations did come through but were a little on the small side. Each image was roughly 3 x 3 or smaller. I wish they would have covered the entire screen. There were only a couple maps which weren't very detailed. All in all, I really liked the drawings and feel they added to the enjoyment of the story. I think it is worth the extra $1 to purchase this version.

My three-star rating refers to the illustrations in this Kindle version. The person or persons who published this title could very easily go back into the file and enlarge them. I think readers would love to see Milo Winter's work a little clearer.

~ Jenna

JoeDanDonigi

Each adventure he encounters radically different problems. The Voyages of Lemuel Gulliver include first, people six inches tall, second a land of giants seventy or so feet tall, and people living in an island-cloud. The fourth voyage, were his men mutiny, foreshadowing the darker side of human nature that follows. They desert on an island where the Houyhnhnms rule. A land of noble talking horses, who can't believe Gulliver has intelligence, ala Planet of the Apes, because the humans/Yahoos on their island seem but. This causes a series of discussions with Gulliver and his "master" a horse who can't grasp lying, greediness and all the various other human frailties. A in his discussions with his master causes Gulliver to be more and more disgusted with the Yahoos on their island and even the humans back home. If knew more about 1850's English history I might of understood the societal, political times of England and Europe in general at that time. There is also an annotated volume which includes more detail. But I didn't read it so don't feel qualified to make an opinion on it, just letting people who are interested informing them it's out there.

Photoman35mm

The margins are poorly set and several of the intro comments for the chapters are missing. However, since many editions do not seem to specify that they are unabridged, this one counts as a positive.

Upon receiving this book, I was pleasantly surprised. It is well put together and is small enough to carry around without even thinking about it. The only complaint I have is that the font is somewhat small and the spacing between lines isn't big enough for a Lilliputian to see. It can be tricky to read at times because I end up skipping lines then hunting through the jungle of words to rediscover where I was. However, overall it's an excellent copy and I would recommend it to anyone.

The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he must not harm their subjects. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours, the Blefuscudians, by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason for, among other crimes, "making water" (urination) in the capital, though he was putting out a fire and saving countless lives. He is convicted and sentenced to be blinded, but with the assistance of a kind friend, he escapes to Blefuscu. Here he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship, which safely takes him back home. This book of the Travels is a topical political satire.

When the sailing ship Adventure is blown off course by storms and forced to sail for land in search of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is 72 feet (22 m) tall (the scale of Brobdingnag is about 12:1, compared to Lilliput's 1:12, judging from Gulliver estimating a man's step being 10 yards (9.1 m)). He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. After a while the constant shows make Lemuel sick, and the farmer sells him to the queen of the realm. The farmer's daughter (who accompanied her father while exhibiting Gulliver) is taken into the queen's service to take care of the tiny man. Since Gulliver is too small to use their huge chairs, beds, knives and forks, the queen commissions a small house to be built for him so that he can be carried around in it; this is referred to as his 'travelling box'. Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King. The King is not happy with Gulliver's accounts of Europe, especially upon learning of the use of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his travelling box is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver and his box into the sea, where he is picked up by some sailors, who return him to England. This book compares the truly moral man to the representative man; the latter is clearly shown to be the lesser of the two. Swift, being in Anglican holy orders, was keen to make such comparisons.

After Gulliver's ship was attacked by pirates, he is marooned close to a desolate rocky island near India. Fortunately, he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends. Laputa's custom of throwing rocks down at rebellious cities on the ground seems the first time that the air strike was conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver tours Balnibarbi, the kingdom ruled from Laputa, as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by the blind pursuit of science without practical results, in a satire on bureaucracy and on the Royal Society and its experiments. At the Grand Academy of Lagado, great resources and manpower are employed on researching completely preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons (see muckraking). Gulliver is then taken to Maldonada, the main port, to await a trader who can take him on to Japan. While waiting for a passage, Gulliver takes a short side-trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, where he visits a magician's dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the "ancients versus moderns" theme in the book. In Luggnagg he encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal. They do not have the gift of eternal youth, but suffer the infirmities of old age and are considered legally dead at the age of eighty. After reaching Japan, Gulliver asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix," which the Emperor does. Gulliver returns

Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to the sea as the captain of a merchantman as he is bored with his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew, whom he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His crew then mutiny, and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue as pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes upon a race of hideous, deformed and savage humanoid creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly afterwards he meets a race of horses who call themselves Houyhnhnms (which in their language means "the perfection of nature"); they are the rulers, while the deformed creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form. Gulliver becomes a member of a horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting his fellow humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilisation, and expels him. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that Captain Pedro de Mendez, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous person. He returns to his home in England, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among 'Yahoos' and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables; in effect becoming insane. This book uses coarse metaphors to describe human depravity, and the Houyhnhms are symbolised as not only perfected nature but also the emotional barrenness which Swift maintained that devotion to reason brought.

Well worth your time. The language is old fashioned, and at times difficult to understand, but it moves at a good pace. The worlds that Swift invents are engaging. I think it's delightful the way he mixes some political and social commentary, into the stories, without being heavy-handed.

Gulliver's Travels was a book that was the required reading in my high school senior english class. At first, you think of Gulliver's Travels as a kid's book due to the cartoons that were put out. But as you read it, you discover it is full of satire for adults.
Jonathan swift writes about how people act or fail to act. Such as in the case where Gulliver finds himself in the land of Giants. Many people there are huge, larger than life- sports stars, models, movie stars, politicians of today- but they fail to see their own faults, acme, blemeishes as Gulliver describes them. Then you have the land of Lilliputians, who represent small people in society trying to be something there not, and always trying to push others around. Their election for mayor is funny in that the official who jumps the highest wins! Sorta like our elections today, the canidate who puts the biggest show wins.
Jonathan then writes about the way he feels society should be in the land of the horses, noble, honorable, loving.HHMMM And he takes a shot at humans calling them "Yahoo's", stating they are dirty, filthy, self-centered and how they throw their dung around like monkeys.
Some say Jonthan Swift was an eccentric and crazy, others say he was a genius. Read the book and you be the judge.

Gulliver is far from being only a children's book, as it is commonly misperceived by those who have not read the unabridged version - but a complex and subtle tale that can bring immense enjoyment to adults. Swift was a genius the rank of Shakespeare.
*
NOTE: IF YOU ARE A CHILD, OR A READER WITH LIMITED VOCABULARY OR PATIENCE, I RECOMMEND GETTING THE AUDIO BOOK FOR ONLY $1.99 FROM AUDIBLE DOT COM, AND DOING "IMMERSIVE READING" - READ AND LISTEN AT THE SAME TIME. IT GOES MUCH FASTER THIS WAY, WITH NO LOSS OF THE FUN.
*
I haven't enjoyed a book like this one for a long time, and i doubt there is another one quite like it.
Very rarely one finds a book that:
1 - deals with themes that are important, universal and relevant even today - science, government, corruption, greed, integrity, upbringing, the role of feelings vs intellect.
2 - embeds these themes in a highly entertaining plot that fleshes out fantasies common to all of us (e.g., What if I discovered a different civilization and, as the first representative of mankind, needed to describe my own to them?; What would it be if I suddenly became much smaller (or much larger) than others?; What if I were immortal?). Everything the reader has ever dreamt to read about will be found in this book!
3 - presents this plot with a narrative mastery of such caliber that the reader enjoys every second to the brim, and is brought extreme reading satisfaction at every juncture.
4 - combines great imagination with great rationality - for even the most fantastical suppositions an explanation and context have been designed, the "juiciest" bits and most interesting and impossible questions are not omitted as in other authors, but have been well thought out and articulated to the full satisfaction of the reader.

This is a MUST READ!
I am becoming a big Swift fan and can't wait to read his other works!

While it's a well-known classic work, the tedious lampooning of the travelogue genre became wearying after too long.

Good features: formatted well for the Kindle. No misspellings or punctuation errors, and highly enjoyable read. The read aloud function works great!

Gulliver's Travels was a book that was the required reading in my high school senior english class. At first, you think of Gulliver's Travels as a kid's book due to the cartoons that were put out. But as you read it, you discover it is full of satire for adults.
Jonathan swift writes about how people act or fail to act. Such as in the case where Gulliver finds himself in the land of Giants. Many people there are huge, larger than life- sports stars, models, movie stars, politicians of today- but they fail to see their own faults, acme, blemeishes as Gulliver describes them. Then you have the land of Lilliputians, who represent small people in society trying to be something there not, and always trying to push others around. Their election for mayor is funny in that the official who jumps the highest wins! Sorta like our elections today, the canidate who puts the biggest show wins.
Jonathan then writes about the way he feels society should be in the land of the horses, noble, honorable, loving.HHMMM And he takes a shot at humans calling them "Yahoo's", stating they are dirty, filthy, self-centered and how they throw their dung around like monkeys.
Some say Jonthan Swift was an eccentric and crazy, others say he was a genius. Read the book and you be the judge.

Gulliver is far from being only a children's book, as it is commonly misperceived by those who have not read the unabridged version - but a complex and subtle tale that can bring immense enjoyment to adults. Swift was a genius the rank of Shakespeare.
*
NOTE: IF YOU ARE A CHILD, OR A READER WITH LIMITED VOCABULARY OR PATIENCE, I RECOMMEND GETTING THE AUDIO BOOK FOR ONLY $1.99 FROM AUDIBLE DOT COM, AND DOING "IMMERSIVE READING" - READ AND LISTEN AT THE SAME TIME. IT GOES MUCH FASTER THIS WAY, WITH NO LOSS OF THE FUN.
*
I haven't enjoyed a book like this one for a long time, and i doubt there is another one quite like it.
Very rarely one finds a book that:
1 - deals with themes that are important, universal and relevant even today - science, government, corruption, greed, integrity, upbringing, the role of feelings vs intellect.
2 - embeds these themes in a highly entertaining plot that fleshes out fantasies common to all of us (e.g., What if I discovered a different civilization and, as the first representative of mankind, needed to describe my own to them?; What would it be if I suddenly became much smaller (or much larger) than others?; What if I were immortal?). Everything the reader has ever dreamt to read about will be found in this book!
3 - presents this plot with a narrative mastery of such caliber that the reader enjoys every second to the brim, and is brought extreme reading satisfaction at every juncture.
4 - combines great imagination with great rationality - for even the most fantastical suppositions an explanation and context have been designed, the "juiciest" bits and most interesting and impossible questions are not omitted as in other authors, but have been well thought out and articulated to the full satisfaction of the reader.

This is a MUST READ!
I am becoming a big Swift fan and can't wait to read his other works!

While it's a well-known classic work, the tedious lampooning of the travelogue genre became wearying after too long.

Good features: formatted well for the Kindle. No misspellings or punctuation errors, and highly enjoyable read. The read aloud function works great!

Has some pretty profound insights on the human condition, but I think he goes a bit too far in the final chapters. Haven't read Swift before, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Would recommend this book to anyone with a jaded outlook and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

This is a very censored rendition of the book Gulliver's Travels. It follows everything exactly while making it very PG for the sake of young readers. Considering it was a free download, I'm satisfied.

Not at all like the movie or children's simplified, shortened, dramatized renditions, but rather obtuse in its tone and pace. However, remember that this was basically a political statement, never intended to be valued for its dramatic and grabbing narrative of romance and adventure.

I was I interested to read that Gulliver made four different journeys since all we recognize is the first visit to Lilliput. The satire gets piled higher and deeper as the book continues and most is still applicable to society today.

This great classic book has hidden within great social statements on general population behavior and government actions in our real world, and a wonderful fantasy novel to enjoy! The best books entertain you, and entice you to think!

I was familiar with the first of the three kingdoms that Gulliver visited but the last two were just as or even more interesting. A true classic, although much of the satire was probably better at the time of the writing.