In Hold the Enlightenment , one of America’s favourite and funniest adventure writers returns with his most entertaining collection of essays yet as he travels the globe and faces down challenges that are animal, topographical and human. Hold the Enlightenment takes Cahill to sites as far-flung as Saharan salt mines, the Congolese jungle, and Hanford, Washington, home of the largest toxic waste dump in the Western Hemisphere. With trademark wit and insight, Cahill describes stalking the legendary Caspian tiger in the mountains bordering Iraq, slogging through a pitch-black Australian Eucalyptus forest to find the nocturnal platypus, diving with great white sharks in South Africa, staving off enlightenment at a yoga retreat in Negril, Jamaica, and much, much more. In these essays, vivid and masterly storytelling combine with outrageously sly humour and jolts of real emotion to show one of the most popular journalists of our time at the peak of his game.