Now, in Abel’s Outback, he has drawn on his writing of the last decade. Here is a sampling of ten years of adventure on all six continents. Whether he is hunting for the wild platypus with an Australian forest ranger, boating up the Amazon with a descendant of Charles Darwin, journeying to catch a glimpse of remote Timbuktu, cringing before the oil-well fires in Kuwait, taking tea with cousins of the Queen Mum, spending Christmas in Hong Kong, reporting on the plight of a Sudanese taxi driver in Inuvik (how do you have sundown prayers in a place where the sun doesn’t go down?), or revisiting one of the strangest spots of all – his native Brooklyn – Allen Abel is inquisitive, original, observant, and often hilariously funny.