This book collects all of the stories featuring Professor George E. Challenger, the most famous of which is The Lost World. Lost World features two scientists, including Challenger, an adventurous English Lord, and a journalist who acts as the story's narrator. As events unfold, the group travels to a mysterious plateau in South America where dinosaurs still roam along with other prehistoric dangers. As one might imagine, the plot largely revolves around the dangers and difficulties of surviving such a locale and returning to civilization.

While Edward Malone is the narrator of the story, the dominant figure is Professor Challenger. His immense intellect is matched only by his ego and air of condescension. It would be easy to dislike such a character, but Doyle does a good job of making him fun to read about. The rest of the cast is also enjoyable and the story is generally a fun read. There are some attitudes expressed toward non-Caucasian characters that are blatantly racist by today's standard, but it would probably be hard to find something from this time period that wouldn't be.

This book contains several stories beyond The Lost World, but they are of a lesser caliber. There are two novella-length stories, The Poison Belt and The Land of Mist, which too often degenerate into an excuse for lengthy philosophical musings expressing points of view that Doyle wanted to get across. The stories are flimsy and the promotion of the author's ideas to ham-handed to be entertaining.

Overall, this book is a good buy and The Lost World is well worth reading. I don't particularly recommend the other stories but this edition is actually cheaper than any version with only The Lost World so you may as well pick this one up and at least have the option of sampling the later tales.

Ahh -- the creator of the great Sherlock Holmes tackles dinosaurs! In the first novel in this collection, Doyle's lesser-known protagonist, George Edward Challenger, leads an expedition to a South American plateau where prehistoric life still exists. While there's a bit too much Doyle-style propaganda here about evolution and cavemen (remember Doyle sought "the missing link"), it's a fine piece of storytelling from the man who must be acknowledged as the first "dinosaur novelist" -- and whose title Crichton ripped off, without so much as a thanks-a-lot! There are four other tales here as well involving Challenger -- a worthy collection indeed!