Yackman’s Adventure Book Reviews

The Proving Ground

Mon, 7 May 2012 20:38:28 -0400

Book Reviewed: The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sidney to Hobart Race
Author: G. Bruce Knecht
Publisher: Little Brown, New York
Copyright Date: 2001
ISBN: 0-31649955-2
Hard/Softcover: Hardcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 7 out of 10

This book focuses on the annual 630 mile Sidney (Australia) to Hobart (New Zealand) race of 1998 in which 115 boats competed. What made this race stand out and gave the book its name was the disastrous surprise cyclone (hurricane) that struck the racing fleet at a most vulnerable point. Of the 115, only 43 made it to the finish line. Some boats turned back, many were damaged, some were lost, as were several sailors.
While the men described in The Proving Ground share the same need for extreme adventure with those in Between a Rock and a Hard Place and A Voyage for Madmen, theirs was not so much an individual test. It was if anything a contest between wealthy men who could bankroll the construction of specially designed racing machines and the crews to sail them. While often super-competitive and extremely successful entrepreneurs, they were just as often not as skilled at sailboat racing as the men they hired as crew.

To humanize the story the author selects several representative competitors to study in detail. Most prominent among them is Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and one of the wealthiest men in the world. Ellison was able to have a super yacht designed and built, and hire a professional crew in an effort to win this and other ocean races. He hoped that his boat, Sayonara, would smash the existing speed record for the race. Ellison, known in business as a tough taskmaster, brought this characteristic to yacht racing also. (I think it is instructive that Steve Jobs, Apple founder and another perfectionistic taskmaster, was Ellison’s best friend.)
Another yacht, Sword of Orion, was owned and skippered by a wealthy pharmacist, Rob Kothe, who jumped into high stakes ocean racing with little experience, but a willingness to spend money. Kothe, known as “Kooky”, was poorly equipped to make decisions in the conditions that developed during this race and as a result lost a man overboard who could not be recovered.
Richard Winning, another wealthy retired entrepreneur, skippered a third more traditional wooden yacht, Winston Churchill. The boat’s traditional full-keeled design initially did well in the worsening conditions. But finally the sometimes eighty food seas holed the Churchill and she went down.
Bruce Knecht’s well researched narrative in engaging and dramatic. It gives us a good feel for the interplay among the characters, both the wealthy owners and the more skilled crewmembers. We can clearly see that most competitors were in way over their heads in this storm. Survival was as much a matter of luck as skill. The thing that places this story a bit lower in my ratings is that, for me, it lacks the element of the heroic quest; one man engaged in an impossible quest against all that nature and fate can throw at him. For me, Adam Ralston (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) and Robin Knox Johnson (A Voyage for Madmen) met this criterion. Larry Ellison did not.

(For a better sailing tale see A Voyage for Madmen)

A Voyage for Madmen

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:46:31 -0400

Book Reviewed: A Votage for Madmen
Author: Peter Nichols
Publisher: Harper Perennial, New York
Copyright Date: 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019764-1
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 9 out of 10

In 1968 nine men set off in nine small boats to circumnavigate the Earth, unsupported and non-stop. This was a race, the brainchild of the London Sunday Times, inspired by the solo circumnavigation the year before by Sir Francis Chichester, Sir Francis, however, pulled into port along the way to make repairs and re-supply. The Sunday Times rules would not allow any stops for any reason.
I am very familiar with the cast of characters in this story: Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnson, Donald Crowhures and the inscrutable Bernard Moitessier in particular. For before I was a kayaker, I was a sailor, and my interest in sailing had just begun to blossom as the events surrounding this impossible race began to jell. I had read Joshua Slocum’s classic book, Sailing Alone Around the world and Chichester’s book Gypsy Moth IV Circles the World. I was filled with the romance and heroic nature of the solo quest, a personal test of strength and character that such an adventure would bring. I had followed the accounts of Knox-Johnson’s voyage and Donald Crowhurst’s tragic madness in my sailing magazines at the time. But all this happened over forty years ago. It’s an old story, so I didn’t expect this book to be too engaging.
I was wrong! This is an extremely well written narrative of the race, weaving the timelines, characters and events into a wonderful story that kept me on the edge of my seat. I felt like I was with the various racers, almost simultaneously. The book is written like the best disaster accounts, with minute by minure reports about what is happening as the race progresses and various competitors drop out. In the end, two racers commit suicide, the leader and presumed winner says “to hell with it”, and turns his boat toward Tahiti, leaving one man to complete the race. It is a great story with great characters written by a master at narrative writing. I recommend it highly.

These books are either about or by characters in A Voyage for Madmen.

At the Mercy of the Sea

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:39:13 -0400

Book Reviewed: At the Mercy of the Sea : The True Story of Three Sailors In a Caribbean Hurricane
Author: John Kretschmer
Publisher: McGraw Hill, New York
Copyright Date: 2007
ISBN: 0-07-147507-9
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 6 out of 10

This story is about three sailors lost in a freak November hurricane in 1999. Well really, there were four sailors, but the fourth guy was crew and young and the author didn’t know him so I guess he doesn’t count, because he survived. While there were three boats and three captains with various levels of experience, the author focuses most of his attention on one, Carl Wake. Carl was a man in his fifties who had dreamed all his life of long sea voyages in his own boat, some of them, single handed. The author befriended him and encouraged Carl in the pursuit of his fantasy. He helped Carl find and outfit a boat. He helped him learn how to sail it. And he agreed to meet Carl at the end of his first long off shore voyage to the US Virgin Islands.
The problem with this book is that about two thirds of it is filled with Kretchmer’s mea culpas (I’m to blame) over what he sees as his role in Carl Wake’s death. For that reason and probably many others, the book is a little slow in getting started. But once into the narrative of the hurricane and what is happening on each of the boats, the story is quite gripping. One sailor miraculously rescues another in the teeth of the storm, only to have them both loose their lives when the second boat founders. Third boat goes down too and the captain dies when he is washed away, while his young crew mate struggles into a damaged life raft.
All in all, it’s a good read and illustrates how sometimes in the game of Life, you draw a fate card from which you cannot recover. But, given several of the other books reviewed here, this would not be the first one I’d pick up.
(For a better sailing tale see A Voyage for Madmen)

127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:41:51 -0500

Book Reviewed: 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Author: Aron Ralston
Publisher: Atria Paperback, a Division of Simon & Shuster, Inc., New York
Copyright Date: 2004
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1850-1
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 10 out of 10

If I had to sum up the whole of this book in one word, I would have to use things like “Great”, “Extraordinary”, “Literate”, even “Profound”. But that’s not the impression I had at its beginning. My initial impression was that this book was a story about a kid, a chance taking, “it can’t happen to me”, life risking, adrenalin junkie adolescent who took stupid chances and finally found himself in an awful life or death situation from which there was no easy escape. That’s one take on his behavior.

Ralston, of course, sees it differently. He calls these pursuits “deep play”. As Ralston described it…

“Over the course of the winter, I learned about the concept of deep play, wherein a person’s recreational pursuits carry a gross imbalance of risk and reward. Without the potential for any real or perceived external gain – fortune, glory, fame – a person puts himself into scenarios of real risk and consequence purely for internal benefit: fun and enlightenment.” Pp. 94

Ralston’s behavior, crazy as it seemed to me, was related to the pursuit of these “internal rewards”. He mentions the almost transcendent feelings he experienced in the wilderness after accomplishing some extreme goal many times throughout the book.

The bare bones of the story are well known. Aron Ralston, a 27 year-old outdoorsman who pursued extreme wilderness challenges found himself deep in a narrow slot canyon in a remote area of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, alone. A half -ton boulder shifted as he maneuvered over it and pinned his right hand between the boulder and the canyon wall. Ralston ultimately cut off his own hand to save his life. The drama in this book all focuses on what happens to Ralston physically and mentally in the 127 hours between these events, with side stories of the events that lead up to his entrapment.

First impressions are not always accurate, or more precisely, they may have some accurate elements but fall short, in this case far short, of the whole picture. In this first person account, some of Ralston’s behavior seems adolescent: a focus on partying, friends and extreme challenges; a low level job that lets him lead the life of a Colorado ski bum and outdoor adventurer; many near death experiences in the wilderness (for example, almost drowning in the Colorado River, being stalked by a hungry Black Bear on an early spring mountainside, being buried in an avalanche along with two friends); and the annoying habit (at least annoying to me) of hiking to the sound of Phish on his Walkman (yes, Walkman. This incident happened in early 2003. The first iPod was introduced in late 2001). When I’m in the outdoors, I like to listen to the natural sounds around me and find plugged in music distracting and annoying. But then, I don’t spend as many hours in the wilderness as Ralston does.

And Ralston seemed to have an appreciation of the fragility of life as he followed his muse into ever more risky adventures.

“The thought occurred to me then that there are many shapes to the thing that separates life from death. Sometimes it’s obvious: the distance that separates you from a lightening bolt, the seat belt that restrains you when you hit a deer at 80 mph, the actions of a friend whose quick reflexes save you from drowning in the Colorado River. Other times it’s subtle, even imperceptible; the microscopic string of DNA that enables your body to fight off an infection you don’t even know you’ve contracted, a decision to climb a different mountain and thereby miss being hit by a rock that assails the route you aren’t on. We go through life ignoring these subtleties because there are a million things we survive every day without recognizing we were ever at risk. Then we have a close call, and we become acutely aware of what that fraction of an inch or that split second means.” Pp.119

I began to appreciate Ralston more when I learned that he was an accomplished pianist. That he has close and loving relationships with his parents and sister. That he is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in Industrial Engineering. That he is well read in literature and philosophy and an excellent writer. That he worked for six years as an engineer at Intel. That he had a wide circle of friends, and that he made a conscious decision to “retire” from Intel so that could pursue his passion for the outdoors more fully. This looks like a much more complex person than my first impression allowed.

About a third of the way through the book, it becomes a real page-turner. Ralston is able to present the most realistic depiction of the mental and physical struggle to survive against impossible odds I have ever read. His descriptions exceed even those of Joe Simpson in that other masterful survival tale, Touching the Void. And along with everything else, this is a textbook account of how a survivor behaves. But unlike so many other survival stories, this one includes all the mental and physical challenges the survivor faced while straining to maintain some control of his fate, never fully giving up.

His prose is superb. So much so that I was with him in that claustrophobic slot canyon while he evaluated his options for escape and survival. I shared his most graphic and realistic description of the day-by-day process of dying from lack of water. I was with him as he made the rational decision to stockpile his own urine to stave off the inevitable death that would come from dehydration, and I experienced the mental and physical reaction he experienced when he needed to drink it. I was there when he first explored amputating his hand and felt the mental revulsion and retching sickness in his stomach as he rejected this alternative. I felt him let go and give in to his inevitable death, hallucinating and seeing visions of his past and future, all the while evaluating his chances for rescue.

He expected to be dead after the third day from lack of water. He was sleep deprived, hypothermic, dehydrated and hallucinating. This passage describes his repeated travel from hallucinogenic sleep to hypothermic wakefulness.

“In the piercing brutality of night, I repeatedly escape into trances, but they melt from my memory the moment I return to the canyon. If heaven turns out to be as comfortable as the trances, then what I return to in the canyon is nothing short of hell. Hell is conventionally portrayed as a crowded, infernally hot place – Milton’s Pandemonium – ruled by a horned devil overseeing the torture of lost souls. I know better now. Hell is indeed a deep, chthonic hole, but hot? No. It is a bitterly dark and unbearably cold place of lonely solitude, an arctic prison without a warden and but one abandoned inmate, forsaken even by the supposed ringleader of the underworld. There is no other spiritual energy, good or evil, on which to project love or hatred. There is only one emotion in hell: unmitigated despair wrapped in abject loneliness.” Pp. 238

My god, what an image. As I said, the man can write. Ralston had lost almost forty pounds. But even in this near death state his will to survive was still present. As his fifth day of entrapment dawned, a chance move showed that his hand was dead and decaying behind the rock. Amputation now seemed like a more reasonable alternative. He knew that the hand was gone, but his dull multi-tool knife blade would not be able to cut through his arm bones and free him from his trap. For the first time it occurred to him that he could break the bones in his arm and cut through the flesh to free himself. The detailed, dispassionate description of his self-amputation of the hand is both dreadful and awe inspiring.

In the end, I really liked this book. I couldn’t put it down. The book is extremely well written, and very literate, which was a surprise. This is Ralston’s first book and it was not ghost written. I will look forward to seeing if he can write more good books without nearly killing himself to get the material. And that last statement kind of sums my ambivalence about Ralston himself.

Though I like him better now that when I began reading the book, I’m not sure I would want him as a friend, or would want to hang out with him. I admire his passion and drive, and respect his ability to maintain some level of rational thought and action within situations where it would be very easy to panic or freeze and do nothing. I envy his relationships with his parents, sister and friends. And I fear that he will kill himself on one of these adventures. That would be a shame, especially if it happens before he has a chance to write again. Yet if it happens, he’ll have had quite a ride and he’ll go out doing what he loves.

No Way Down

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 21:49:29 -0500

Book Reviewed: No Way Down: Life and Death on K2
Author: Graham Bowley
Publisher: Harper, New York
Copyright Date: 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-18478-3
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 7 out of 10

In many ways this book is very disturbing. It is a tale of death and survival on K2, the world’s second highest mountain. K2 is arguably the world’s most difficult climb. Unlike Touching the Void, Joe Simpson’s harrowing tale of survival against all odds, or John Krackour’s book, Into Thin Air about death and heroism on Everest, No Way Down is less about heroism and survival, and more about death and despair in the death zone above 26,000 feet.

Most mountaineering tales that describe the loss of climbers detail someone falling or sliding over a cliff into a void thousands of feet deep, never to be seen or heard from again. There is no first hand knowledge of the suffering the falling climber experienced after the fall (Joe Simpson’s book is an exception, but his heroic self-rescue is very uplifting). In this report however, there are several stories detailing the suffering of injured and dying climbers in this report. The most wrenching story is of a mountaineering couple. The husband who asked his wife to wait while he checked out the trail ahead only to be swept to his death right in front of her by falling ice.

In this report, several survivors experienced in graphic detail the suffering and death of companions whom they could not help. The most horrific of these was the experience of the Italian and Irish climbers who while descending K2 came upon three climbers, two Koreans and a Sherpa, badly injured and hanging from their ropes and harnesses against an ice wall. They had been swept away while roped together by another icefall from the overhanging serac (overhanging ice shelf). One was upside down and bleeding badly, a second was hanging unconscious and a third was badly injured, sitting on a ledge, held in place by the ropes.

The Italian and Irish climbers, in poor condition themselves, worked to relieve the suffering of the three until the Irishman, out of his mind with altitude sickness, headed back up the mountain. The Italian climber promised to call for help and left the three and the delirious Irishman in an attempt to save his own life. Later that day, more of the serac collapsed, hurling the trapped Koreans to their deaths past other survivors. The Irishman, knocked off the mountain in the same avalanche, tumbled down with and among the ice blocks. He finally came to rest near the Italian who had narrowly avoided the avalanche himself. The Italian climber could only identify his friend by the clothing he was wearing, as his head had been completely destroyed, with brain tissue, bone and even eyes spread out in the rubble.

Eleven people in all lost their lives on the mountain between August 1 and August 3, 2008. Several of the survivors had to be evacuated for serious medical conditions, usually frostbite. Several lost toes and fingers. Some suffered long term PTSD. A few vowed to give up mountaineering entirely. Most said they would never return to K2. But a few were drawn back to the mountains. One Korean, a woman who had summated K2 on August 1 and survived, had a goal of climbing all the world’s 26,000 foot mountains. She died a year later in the death zone of a nearby peak.

I have some appreciation of why people climb mountains. My brother-in-law is a mountaineer (you can see some of his photos and stories in the Guest Blog section). I can also understand why people who become skilled at a sport want to test themselves with more difficult challenges (See the review Without a paddle). I do that in my kayaking. But I have no desire to put my life at risk the way these people do, climbing in the death zone above 26,000 feet, knowing that the chances of a harrowing death, injury or amputation are very great.

This book is a good if harrowing read. I would recommend it if you have read other stories of extreme survival situations in the mountains. If you are new to this genre, read Joe Simpson’s first person tale, Touching the Void, first. It is so good and uplifting that I have read it several times.

Without A Paddle: A Memoir

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 21:26:11 -0500

Book Reviewed: Without a Paddle: Racing Twelve Hundred Miles Around Florida By Sea Kayak
Author: Warren Richey
Publisher: St. Martins Press, New York
Copyright Date: 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-63076-8
Hard/Softcover: Hardcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 9 out of 10

I really liked this book. It is a great yarn about an extreme race, a circumnavigation if you will, of the state of Florida. Impossible you say? You can’t circumnavigate a peninsula! More on that later.

Part of the appeal of the book for me is that I met the author and heard him speak about the race – The Great Florida Circumnavigation Race. He does not look like a man who could accomplish the herculean feats necessary to be competitive in this race. He was mild mannered, soft spoken, funny, self-depreciating and a bit of a romantic. He was not a big man, nor did he appear exceedingly fit. Yet he managed to paddle sixty miles a day on average, spending sixteen to eighteen hours a day in his boat, with only about fours of sleep each night for almost three weeks. Another part of the book’s appeal for me was that I had paddled segments of the circumnavigation route. I was very familiar with these and other areas he paddled as well. I could really relate to the things he saw and the issues he dealt with.

Who is this book for? This is basically, but not exclusively, a man’s book. But it’s not for every man. The author took on this race in his fiftieth year partly as a personal challenge and partly to escape from a painful divorce. Throughout the narrative he swings between the action in front of him and reflections on his failed marriage, his relationship with his son and his feelings about a new relationship. The thing is, I could relate to many of the deeply personal feelings he wrote about. I had experienced similar feelings at the end of my first marriage. So these episodes mostly added to the richness of the book for me. It gave me a greater appreciation of the author as a whole person.

Still, the book is basically a story about a fast race around Florida and the fears and dilemmas faced. The author was filled with real and imagined fears about what he would face on this trip. So much so that he was given the nickname “Sharkchow”. I won’t tell you how the race ended in deference to the author’s wishes. But I will tell you that by the time he reached Jacksonville, he was one of the top three racers.

Oh yes, that circumnavigation thing: You can almost circumnavigate Florida using the Gulf, Intra-coastal waterway, rivers and streams. There is just one “small” forty-mile stretch where racers must pull their boats out of the water and physically tow them to the next stream. Unbelievable.

This is a great book. I highly recommend it. And if you ever have a chance to hear Warren Richey speak, do so. You’ll enjoy hearing some of the details of this incredible adventure directly from him.

Warren’s Website-It’s worth a look: http://www.warrenrichey.com/

Reviewer’s Footnote: Richey used two pieces of equipment on this adventure that I have no experience with; a jungle hammock and a deck mounted sail. I was intrigued by both, especially the hammock. I intend to email Richey to ask about this equipment. BTW, he signed my book with this sentence: “To Don, The only thing better than being on the water is being on the water with someone you love.” I don’t disagree, but as I said earlier, he is a bit of a romantic.

The Survivors Club

Tue, 8 Feb 2011 19:17:25 -0500

Book Reviewed: The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life
Author: Ben Sherwood
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, New York
Copyright Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-58024-3
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 9 out of 10

This is a good book. It is a study of survivors and the skills it takes to survive. The author, Ben Sherwood, looks at survival events and those people in them who live and die in an attempt to isolate the characteristics that help individuals survive. He discovers that while chance always plays a roll in survival, and training can enhance a person’s likelihood of living, no single set of skills or personal characteristics will determine the outcome.
Part I is entitled, “What It Takes to Survive”. These are some of the chapter subheadings in Part I:
• Why So Many People Die When They Shouldn’t
• How Much of Life (and Death) Do You Really Control?
• Prayer Miracles and the Power of Faith
• Why Good Things Always Happen to the Same People
• How Fear Can Save Your Life
• Who Bounces Back and Who Doesn’t

You can see that these topics are all over the map, yet Sherwood manages to weave them into a coherent whole.
In Part II (Are You a Survivor?), the author pulls all the threads of the book together, essentially saying that all of us possess some of the skills needed to survive in a crisis situation. He then takes the reader through a psychometric designed to gauge his/her own survival strengths. According to Sherwood there are five main survivor types.
• The Connector
• The Realist
• The Thinker
• The Fighter
• The Believer

These characteristics are thoroughly defined and discussed, with stories of actual survivors and survival situations given to illustrate the characteristic. In addition, there are some twelve survival tools identified and defined (Adaptability, Resilience, Faith, Hope, Purpose, Tenacity, Love, Empathy, Intelligence, Ingenuity, Flow, Instinct). The on-line psychometric (the Survivor Profiler) purports to identify your survivor type and top three survival tools with a high level of accuracy.
To access the profiler and determine your survivor type and top three survivor tools, go to www.survivorprofiler.org/getcode to register with an email address and password. You will be sent a unique access code and will be sent to www.survivorprofiler.org to complete your profile. However, your results will mean so much more if you buy and read The Survivors Club. You can buy this book below.

Island at the Center of the World

Mon, 7 Feb 2011 20:49:40 -0500

Book Reviewed: The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Duch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America

Author: Russell Shorto
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York
Copyright Date: 2004
ISBN-1-4000-7867-9
Hard/Softcover: Softcover

Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 10 out of 10

Review: I liked this book – a lot! I like it so much I’ve bought copies for several family members and friends. I like it so much that I will not part with my own copy, but intend to keep it in my small library.
The Island at the Center of the World is the story of Dutch Manhattan and the Hudson north to Albany. It covers the time period from the first establishment of a trading colony by the Dutch until the colony was surrendered to the British, a period of some sixty years. Having lived near the Hudson, paddled its waters and spent time in New York City the book has special meaning because there is so much that is familiar in it, yet I knew nothing of its genesis or how it still impacts my life today. For instance, I find it fascinating that Broadway was an Indian trading route before the Dutch arrived. It continues today on much of its original path.
The Dutch were traders, not nation builders. They opened their doors to anyone and everyone who wanted to work and do business. This created a cosmopolitan mixture of races, religions, values and customs that generated a tolerance for and acceptance of differences that continues to this day in that great city. The fact that the Dutch were focused on business and trade rather than religion and nation building is one reason why New York became a world trading center and the state earned the title of “Empire State”.
We who have grown up in the state and lived along the Hudson will recognize the familiar names of Schuyler and Van Rensselaer and be surprised at how Yonkers got its name. We all know the story of how Manhattan was purchased for $24.00 worth of trinkets, but will be surprised at the Dutch traders understanding of Indian ideas of property ownership. This allowed them to live and work peacefully side-by-side for many years. You will see how the caricature of the peg legged governor, Peter Stuyvesant, does such an injustice to the real man. You will learn how the tradesmen’s struggles to establish self-government that incorporated ideals of free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom set the tone for what would become the Thirteen Colonies and the United States Constitution.
This book is extremely well written. Shorto somehow makes a great yarn out of a scholarly work on this original Dutch colony. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Buy this book and a related History of the Hudson here.

The Hudson: a History

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:34:57 -0400

Title: The Hudson: a History
Author: Tom Lewis
Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven/London
Copyright Date: 2005
ISBN: 978-0-300-11990-9
Hard/Soft Cover: Soft Cover

Reviewed By: Don Yackel

Yackman’s Rating: 8 out of 10

Review: This is the second book on the Hudson and the early history of New York that I have read this year (see Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto). Both books are excellent and complement each other. Island focuses on the Dutch history of New Amsterdam and the Hudson as far north as Albany. It’s interest is in the people and culture that shaped the character of the island that was to become New York and how that culture differed from the British colonies that surrounded it, giving New York its unique character.

This book focuses on the history of the river itself, starting with pre-history and continuing through today. For those of us who have spent time in the Hudson River Valley, and especially for those of us who have paddled the river and seen it up close, the people and places mentioned through the centuries of European settlement will sound very familiar. I have lived in, visited, paddled through and learned about so many of the places in this book. The book enriches that familiarity by making rich connections between those familiar places and their history. I was especially excited by the description of the Hudson’s role in the Revolutionary war because I had visited West Point, the Saratoga battlefield and Ticonderoga. This book pulls all of those important events and places together uniting them around the central concept of the river.

I was moved by the story of Verplanck Colvin, who surveyed the eight million acre wilderness known as the Adirondacks and was almost single handedly responsible for the establishment of the six million acre Adirondack Park. Colvin was the first to identify the headwaters of the Hudson with this familiar description: the headwater of the Hudson was, “…a minute unpretending tear of the clouds…a lonely pool, shivering in the breeze of the mountains, and sending its limpid surplus through Feldspar Brook, to the Opalescent Verplanck Colvin (1847–1920) was a lawyer, author, illustrator and topographical engineer whose understanding and appreciation for the environment of the Adirondack Mountains led to the creation of New York's Forest Preserve and the Adirondack Park.
Born on January 4, 1847 in Albany, New York to Andrew James Colvin, ......

Taken from Wikipedia: Read More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verplanck_ColvinRiver, the well-spring of the Hudson.”

Another excellent bit of storytelling depicts Lincoln’s train trip across New York State on his way to be inaugurated president in 1861. As he arrives in New York City to a tepid welcome it is noted that the actor, John Wilkes Booth, is starring in a major New York play in a theater just down the street. This is an awesome bit of historical research connecting coincidental facts that place these two men in close proximity; a premonition of what we know will come.

This is an excellent book. If you enjoy history, especially as it relates to the places you are surrounded by and live among, I strongly recommend this interesting and well written book.

“ There Is No Toilet Paper On the Road Less Traveled”

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:40:04 -0400

Title: There’s No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled
The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure

Author: Edited by Doug Lansky
Publisher: Traveler’s Tales, Inc., San Francisco, CA
Copyright Date: 1998
ISBN: 1-885211-27-9
Hard/Soft Cover: Soft Cover
Reviewed By: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 7/10

Review: This is a great book to take on a multi-day paddling trip. It consists of twenty-eight short stories about travel misadventures by authors like Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and many others. The stories are just long enough to fill that space between crawling into the sleeping bag and lights out, and the book is small enough to pack easily (I know this seems like a silly concern, but I have tried to pack oversized, thick books on trips and they are always problematic. And e-books are only a solution if you can keep them dry and have access to a power source.)

What is funny to me may not be funny to you. So, as with all humor writing, you will find some offerings hilarious and others sort of ho-hum. For instance I found the first offering, a story called “Nudity is a State of Mind” by Alan Zwieble, FD/LOL (text talk for “Falling Down, Laughing Out Loud”). Another called “Deep Fried Potato Bug” by Richard Sterling was equally funny with an added “eeeeou, gross” factor in it. And for any parent who has made the pilgrimage to Disney World, Caryl Rivers story, “Dragging the Family to the Magic Kingdom” will really hit home. A few others were not so funny or interesting to me (I won’t color your thinking on these by naming them).

All in all, this is a book worth reading. It’s not deep or thought provoking. It is a light, fun read.

STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:19:22 -0400

Book Reviewed: STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
Copyright Date: 2003
ISBN 978-0-393-32482-2 pbk.
Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: OK, so why would I read a book like this? The topic does make one a little queezy. But the cover read “New York Times Best Seller” , and there were three full pages of endorsements, plus the back cover, saying how funny and unusual the book was. There were so many endorsements, that I wondered if a selling job was being done. But while I found the dark humor forced at times, the book requires some dark humor just to cope with the content. And it does force you to think about your own “final arrangements”. What happens to us after we …die, pass on, cross over, kick the bucket, take the dirt nap, expire, go to heaven, go to hell - you fill in the blank? Or more precisely, what happens to our bodies after we die? Surprisingly, it’s more complicated than you would suspect.
Most people will go the traditional embalming and burial route, while a significant minority will opt for cremation. Or, barring no last wishes on the part of the deceased (oops, I need to add deceased to my list above), relatives will decide what is to be done. The descriptions of what happens to embalmed and buried bodies, sealed in airtight vaults is only slightly more unpleasant than that of cremation.
A large part of the book focuses on what happens to bodies left for research. I learned that the person donating his or her body for research has essentially no control over how it will be used. Most people who donate their body for research have a vision of contributing to medical research in some way, either through the training of doctors or by becoming lab specimens that will aid in the understanding of disease. Some are used for these purposes. But others are consigned to the “body farm” at the university of Tennessee, where through their decay in the open, they aid forensic scientists in solving time of death issues (see the chapter “Life After Death”). A few go to the military to test body armor and the stopping power of new weaponry (see the chapter “The Cadaver Who Joined The Army”). Some become human crash test dummies, used to calibrate injury and death stresses on mechanical crash test dummies (see the chapter “Dead Man Driving”). Then there are a whole raft of chapters on cannibalism, brain death, reanimation, crucifixion experiments and how remains are used to reconstruct airplain crashes.
Roach’s first chapter, “A Head Is A Terrible Thing to Waste”, really sets the tone for the whole book. Roach is invited (or finagles an invitation to) a seminar for plastic surgeons. The seminar will teach a specific facelift technique. Roach is ushered into a room with forty-one tables. Each table has a disposable aluminum turkey roasting pan on it. Each pan is covered with a cloth. Under each cloth is a human head for the seminar surgeon to practice on.
There is a lot of dark humor in this chapter as Roach tries to maintain her equilibrium. In the end, she manages to understand that this is a good use of a cadaver. It allows the surgeon to practice so that he or she does not make mistakes on a living person. But along the way, she can’t help but speculate about whose job it is to remove all the heads from the bodies for an activity like this one. And of course, she searches out and meets “Yvonne…the cadaver beheader”. Roach says, “My end of the conversation takes place entirely in my head and consists of a repeated line. You cut off heads. You cut off heads. You cut off heads.” I’m sure I would have been thinking the same thing. How would anyone maintain their objectivity? How do you not wonder about the person that lived in that body whose head you are removing? Could you imagine dinner conversation with “Yvonne…the cadaver beheader”?
Reading STIFF got me thinking about my own “final wishes”. Maybe it’s my age, or that there have been so many deaths in my family over the past few years – I am now the oldest living person in my immediate family. When I’ve thought about the disposal of my body I have been adamant that I do not want burial – I’m too claustrophobic. Even though I know intellectually that it won’t matter, I get into such a sweat thinking about being locked up in a small box deep in the ground that I just reject the whole idea. I’m not really into donating for medical research either, though I’ not sure why. It may have to do with the needs of the living. That basically leaves cremation, which is probably still my choice. I always thought it would be nice to fertilize a garden somewhere. However, STIFF tells me that cremains have no real nutritive value. Maybe Lisa would like to keep me in a jar on a shelf, or under the bed where I can keep an eye on her.
Then there is chapter 11 – Out of the Fire and Into the Compost Bin”. A Swedish woman, Susanne Wiigh-Masak, is promoting a process where-by remains are freeze dried, bombarded by sound waves and reduced to compost. The idea is that such remains would be used to fertilize a memorial garden where the names of the dead would be posted and relatives could come and sit for comfort, should they want to do so (some of this is my elaboration on Wiigh-Masak’s ideas). I like the idea. It seems so much more positive than being locked in a box and stuck in the ground, or going up a chimney as sooty smoke. I don’t know if the idea will ever take off here before I need the service, but I’m ready so sign up!
All-in-all, this is a pretty good book. It is certainly thought provoking. It’s a little nauseating and uncomfortable in spots, but funny throughout. It does force the reader to think about a topic that is more easily avoided than dealt with, which can be a good thing.

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

Mon, 2 Mar 2009 21:42:15 -0500

Book Reviewed: Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death
Author: Laurence Gonzales
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, New York
Copyright Date: 2005
ISBN 978-0-393-32615-4
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 10 points out of 10

Review: I previously reviewed Laurence Gonzales book, Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things. Everyday Survival is the second book in this series on survival by Gonzales. The book being reviewed here, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, is the first book. I re-read it after reading Everyday Survival. I wanted to see if it was as good as I had remembered. If you have read the review on Everyday Survival, you know that I had some trouble with that book. It seemed to wander pretty far a field, dealing with survival in intellectual and often cosmic terms. The re-reading confirmed my earlier opinion of Deep Survival. It is an excellent book. It is much better grounded and contains analyses that can actually help in a survival situation. Gonzales dissects several accidents, identifying the mental and physical elements that enhance our chances of survival.
In a chapter entitled “Memories of the Future”, Gonzales describes how the emotional components of past events, positive and negative, can drive behavior in the future. For example, he details the fate of eight snowmobilers returning from a search and rescue mission in Alberta, Canada. Even though warned of a severe avalanche condition, three members of the group leave the others to roar up the face of a mountain in an activity called “high marking”. These men had participated in this activity before. They loved the feel of speed as their powerful machines climbed higher and higher up the mountain until gravity stopped them. The adrenalin rush and emotional high they experienced in this activity in the past overwhelmed the intellectual knowledge that the activity could cause an avalanche. They had never experienced an avalanche before, so they had no emotional connection to the event. But they surely had a highly positive emotional connection to high marking. They wanted to feel that rush and feel those positive emotions again. Emotion trumped knowledge in this instance. An avalanche occurred and several members of the group died.
This is not unlike the story of the three people on the beach as the Christmas Day tsunami roared ashore in Everyday Survival, Gonzales second survival book. Each person had a different emotional and intellectual connection to the idea of tsunami and the idea of the beach as a benign or possibly dangerous place. As a result, many peopled died while others saw the danger and lived.
In another chapter entitled, “The Anatomy of an Act of God”, Gonzales makes the case that accidents are inevitable in risky activities (i.e. wilderness hiking, mountain climbing, kayaking, flying, etc.), but that while a certain number of accidents will happen, an individual can take steps to prevent being the victim. He uses the image of sand slowly falling through an hourglass, creating a sand pile below. Most of the time the sand is stable, with each grain building the pile higher. But periodically the sand pile reaches a point where it is no longer stable, and the addition of one more grain causes the pile to collapse out of control until a new state of equilibrium is reached. Gonzales says that our participation in risky activities is like that. We go about these activities, trying to mitigate the danger, until they become almost routine. Then one small act destabilizes the sand pile and everything comes crashing down.
As an example, Gonzales tells the story of a world-class rock climber. While preparing for her climb she is distracted by an onlooker asking her a question. As she begins her climb, something gnaws at her mind, but she dismisses it. After reaching the top, she backs off, beginning her rappel to the bottom and falls sixty feet, nearly killing herself. The one small thing, the grain that destabilized the sand pile, was the distracting question. It came as she was threading the safety rope through the belaying device. She stopped to answer the question, then bent to tie her shoe and began her climb, while a little voice at the back of her mind tried to alert her that she had forgotten something.
In a second example, Gonzales tells of four friends, mountain climbers on Mount Hood. After a hard climb, they make the top and soon begin their decent. The four were roped together, something that is supposed to provide a measure of safety should one of the climbers slip. All four had practiced arresting falls by throwing themselves face down and hammering the blade of their ice ax into the frozen surface. This had always stopped a slide. As the four worked their way down, one person would plant the shaft of his ice ax in the frozen snow and use it to belay the others. When all had worked their way down as far as the rope would let them, the belayer would pull the ax, the bottom person would become the belayer and the process would start again. They had done this many times. But this time, when the belayer pulled his ax, he lost his balance and fell on his back. This was the grain that destabilized the sand pile. The whole system was based upon no slack in the rope, short falls, and falls coming from those below the top person. The belayer had thirty-five feet of rope between him and the next climber. By the time all the slack in the line was used up, he had rocketed past the second climber, sliding a full seventy feet before the rope snapped taught and he pulled number two, and then three and four with him off the mountain. On the way down, this group collided with another and carried them off the mountain too. As a result, several died and the rest were severely injured. In this case, what seemed like a trivial event, the pulling of the belay, turned out to be the grain that destabilized the sand pile, and all the careful planning came crashing down.
Gonzales claims that such accidents will happen, but do not have to happen to you or me. Practice, a willingness to adapt plans to developing conditions, training to keep emotional reactions in check and survival training among others can enhance your chances of survival. Yet he points out that you can be the perfect survivor with the correct attitude and ability to adapt to conditions and still die. While some folks who do everything wrong, survive. All you can do is skew the odd in your favor. In the end, it’s still be a craps shoot.
Gonzales tells the story of a plane flying over the Amazon jungle that crashed. Several adults and one teenaged girl survived. She was dressed in a white confirmation dress and white heals, and had a broken arm. Not your basic jungle survival gear or condition. The adults decided to stay put and wait for rescue, as we are taught to do in survival training. After waiting a day, the girl set off through the jungle alone. By all rights, she should have died. But after several weeks in the jungle, she made it out, while the others died. His lesson here is that sometimes the rule breakers survive while the rule-bound do not. Still, I wouldn’t have bet on the girl.
There is so much to this book, I could go on for much too long (perhaps I already have). While it has a chapter called “The Rules of Adventure”, this is not really a how-to book. It is more about understanding the anatomy of an accident and the psychological factors that impact survival - life or death. I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever participated, even casually, in a risky sport or activity. I’m sure you will pull something of value out of it. And, it’s a good read. I’ve read it twice and could read it again – just not right away!

Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 11:54:24 -0500

Yackman’s Rating: 7 out of 10 points

Book Reviewed: Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things
Author: Laurence Gonzales
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, New York
Copyright Date: 2008
ISBN 978-0-393-05858-3
Hard/Softcover: Hardcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Review: How do I begin to review this book? First, I’ll say that it’s not the book I expected it to be. Laurence Gonzales’ last book, Deep Survival, was an exploration of death and survival in extreme situations (the book is subtitled “Who Lives, Who Dies and Why”). It is an excellent book, which I will review at another time. I expected this book to be of a similar nature, but focused on much more ordinary situations in which people make inappropriate decisions, taking inappropriate actions that lead to injury or death.
In fact, the first third of the book does explore the psychological underpinnings of our decision-making and how it sometimes goes awry. These underpinnings are contained in two concepts: mental models, and scripts.
Mental Models: Human beings are constantly organizing information from the environment and constructing models to contain this information. For example, the first time you see a dog as a child, you have no reference for the model “dog”. With time and experience, you learn that a wide range of creatures, some short, some tall, some hairy, some hairless, some sleek, some blocky, all fit into the concept of “dog”. We build a mental model of what a dog is and every time we see a four legged creature, we compare it to this model and identify the creature as “dog” or something else matching some other model of a four legged animal. Once the model has been established, we can usually identify “dog” instantly, without conscious thought.
Scripts: Scripts are the behaviors we exhibit or actions we take in response to the model we have identified. For example, if our mental model of “dog” includes pleasant times with dogs and we see them as friendly, the script we run tells us that it is OK to approach a dog and expect it to receive our attention warmly. We don’t think about this action. We see a four legged animal, we identify it as a dog, our experience with other dogs has been positive, we run the script that says this dog will be friendly and is safe to approach. This all happens in an instant, without conscious thought. The model and script save us the effort of confronting every new situation as if it was our first experience with it. If the dog is friendly, our model is re-enforced, as is our behavior. If this dog snarls and snaps at our approach, we may be surprised. This unexpected behavior may cause us to adjust our model to “most dogs are friendly, but some are not”. It may also cause us to adjust our script so that in a new situation, we will approach a dog more cautiously until we know which kind of dog it is.
Gonzales gives a simple and funny example of a script over practiced and played out in a completely inappropriate and dangerous way. It seems that a new police recruit spent long hours with a friend practicing how to safely take a gun away from a criminal who had the jump on him. Over and over the cop would disarm his friend, then hand the gun back and do it again. One day, the real thing happened and all the training paid off, almost. The officer quickly disarmed the perpetrator, then just as quickly gave the gun back to him, just as he had practiced. That script had become so automatic that he could not vary it to be appropriate in the real situation.
Gonzales identifies one particularly dangerous model and its related scripts. He calls it “a vacation state of mind”. A vacation state of mind is one where we are in a relaxed state, with our defenses down. This makes us less able to experience our environment, to see what is really happening. He gives three examples from the 2005 tsunami in Indonesia.
There is video of a man standing on the beach as the sea pulled back for a huge distance, much further and faster than any tide. He stood there with his hands in his bathing suit pockets, watching as a huge wave built offshore. He didn’t move until the enormous wave, towering high above his head crashed down on him. He was never seen again. He was in a vacation state of mind. Even though what he was seeing was clearly unusual, his model for time at the beach said that beaches are benign places, and waves, even big ones, are part of being at the beach. Big waves are beautiful to watch and fun to play in, so his script said, “Let’s stay and see what happens. This could be fun.” Even with the enormous wave bearing down on him, about to engulf him, his model and its related script didn’t change, and he died.
On the same beach was a ten-year-old girl. She saw the sea pull back and became alarmed. She was remembering something in the back of her mind about tsunamis, something she had studied in school. She ran up the beach screaming for people to move to higher ground. Many people followed her and one hundred were saved. She had had less time to build a model of “beach” and had fresh information about possible dangers at the beach. She instantly changed her script from “let’s stay and watch”, to “run for your life”, and many people lived as a result. She had been able to break out of that vacation state of mind.
The final example was of a man and his buddies who had been out partying late the night before. While the others slept in their first floor hotel room, this fellow sat on his patio drinking coffee and enjoying the morning. Then he noticed the sea pull back. His model of beach included an experience with a much more benign tsunami when he was much younger. He immediately set his vacation state of mind aside and ran the script that said he and his friends were in danger. He quickly went inside and roused his buddies, dragging them complaining to the hotel’s forth floor. From that vantage point they could see the disaster unfolding around them, with the knowledge of their certain death in the flooded floors below them had they not moved quickly.
So what does this say to paddlers like us? I think it is easy, especially for the inexperienced paddler, to get into a vacation state of mind about kayaking. The mental model that most inexperienced paddlers have is that kayaking is a benign sport with few dangers. Thus we see many paddlers on our lakes and rivers without spray decks and with PFD’s stowed on deck or somewhere in the cockpit. Those of us who paddle more extensively and in all kinds of conditions see this as foolhardy. Our mental model includes sudden thunder squalls, unexpected powerboat wakes, sudden shifts and increases in wind. We know that it is too late to put on your PFD when you need it. We know that a spray deck can keep you afloat when waves are washing across the boat. Our mental model, based on greater experience keeps us more alert to changes in our environment, which then drives action.
I found this discussion of models, scripts and a vacation state of mind interesting, useful and relevant. The rest of the book pursued ideas that in my mind were connected to the idea of survival, but in largely abstract and philosophical ways. And while I found them very interesting, I struggled to maintain the connection with survival.
For instance, Gonzales spends a lot of time talking about energy and entropy. He talks about the energy in stars, bacteria and human beings (among many others) and how the high energy in these things moves to areas of low energy. He sees these things as channels for moving energy and achieving entropy. As an example, imagine a steaming cup of coffee sitting on a table in a cold room. The heat in the coffee represents energy, higher than the energy in the cold room. The heat from the coffee quickly radiates into the cold room, warming it ever so slightly until the coffee and the room reach the same temperature. A sort of equilibrium sets in, entropy has occurred.
Gonzales postulates that we are the prime movers of energy on the planet, dissipating huge amounts of energy, quickly moving the planet toward entropy. He connects this discussion to survival by saying that if we continue to use our existing models of living, which drive scripts causing us to use more and more resources, our species will ultimately fail. He makes a strong argument that life will continue through the examination of many organisms living in what we would consider places where life could not exist. But human life will not necessarily continue, unless we adjust our models and scripts to accommodate the new circumstances.
While Gonzales’ science writing is clear and accessible, his prose approaches poetry. Here is an excerpt from his description of a night spent with a colleague on a dry lakebed out west.
“On the night that Jonas and I spent out on that dry lake bed, I made a fire from the thorny greasewood bushes. The sun withdrew behind the mountains as the wind picked up and made the flames roar like a smelter, and drove orange cinders in wild arcs across the lake. I watched them bounce along until they dimmed and vanished in the distance. The vast empty land stretched away from the fire’s nervous glow, and the tarp snapped in the wind, as we sat and watched Cassiopeia rise across the misty wheel of the galaxy. Mars and Jupiter towed a hollow moon up through a far deck of stratocumulus. Holes in the clouds sent spotlights down across the white land and made a death’s head of the moon, until it breached the wall of clouds, luring mountains out of the dark. Above the cold moon, the Milky Way faded, and a million worlds winked out. The desert glowed all night with an eerie chemical light” Pg 255

That writing is so rich and so real that I can close my eyes and experience the feel and the smell and the sight of that night. There are moments of writing like that all through this book.
A common thread through out this book is Gonzales’ search for the origins of life. He traces our ancestry, following the trail back through exotic life forms to the first cells that contained life and concludes that given the abundance and diversity of life and of the elements that created it, life, simple living cells to complex beings, is inevitable. He sums this up in the final paragraph of the book.

“I cast myself across the land in search of enlightenment, and here is what I found: that matter and energy are one continuous flow. Nothing remains except the process. And that matter is so full of energy that it sometimes has to get right up and dance. And when it does, we call it life.” Pg 258

I do not understand everything in this book and there is much I have left out (self organizing systems, for instance), but this book makes you think. And in many ways it is a complement to Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us. I don’t recommend Everyday Survival for everyone, but if you find anything described here appealing or challenging, please read it. I’m glad I did. I will be digesting Everyday Survival for a long time.

The World Without Us

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:11:15 -0500

Book Reviewed: The World Without Us
Author(s): Alan Weisman
Publisher: Picador, St. Martin’s Press, New York
Copyright Date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-42790-0
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Review: This is not really an adventure book. But it is a book for people who value the outdoors and wilderness, and are concerned about what our species is doing to it. That certainly includes me, and I suspect, many of you.
The premise of the book began with a simple question. The author, Alan Weisman, had written an article on Chernobyl after the meltdown. He was surprised to find that nature had rushed in to fill the void left by a human population that disappeared overnight. Even with the radioactive surroundings, nature seemed better off without us.
After reading the article, an editor friend from Discover magazine called Weisman and asked the question, “What would happen if humans disappeared everywhere?” That question sparked the thinking and research that led to this book.
The book plays back and forth between the present, the past and the future, exploring what life could be without us. For example, Weisman examines the paradox of the last great extinction. About 10,000 years ago, all of the mega-fauna in the new world as well as Europe and Asia went extinct (Mastodons, saber toothed tigers, and giant ground sloths to name a few). Yet this did not happen in Africa. These extinctions appear to have been caused by the hunting activity of modern man. The paradox is that modern humans originated in Africa, yet Africa is the only continent where mega-fauna still exist. Why didn’t our African ancestors cause mega-fauna to go extinct there?
Weisman’s explanation for this is that the human species and African mega-fauna evolved together in a way that allowed man and animals to become wary and fearful of each other, to adapt to each other. Whereas, the mega-fauna elsewhere had evolved without the pressures of human kind. They were unaware of the dangers posed by this new human creature when he appeared. They were wiped out before they could adapt.
If this seems implausible, consider the Passenger Pigeon. It was estimated in the 1800’s that a single flock contained some 200 million individuals. Yet hunted for food and slaughtered as pests, they were all gone by the 1930’s. Weisman goes on to speculate about the re-emergence of some nearly extinct species in a world without us, and illustrates his speculation with examples of protected species that have rebounded.
In another section, Weisman speculates about what human creations will fall apart and which will last in a world without us. His speculation is always supported by science and real world examples. But the chapter that has stuck with me is on plastics. Plastics are nearly eternal. They are so indestructible that the first piece of Bakelite (the first plastic) ever produced is still in existence somewhere.
Billions of tons of plastic are dumped into landfills and the oceans every year. Many more tons of plastic enter the ocean through runoff from the land. These all wind up in oceanic “dead zones” or gyres. Gyres are like eddies in rivers. They are caused by currents that circulate around the dead zone, trapping debris within.
The author passed through the North Pacific Gyre, over a 1,000 miles wide and 10,000 square miles in size (this is one of six gyres in the world’s oceans). He found a continuous field of mostly plastic trapped there; plastic parts, Styrofoam packaging and cups, monofilament line, abandoned fishnets, plastic barrels, plastic floats and plastic bags-billions of plastic bags. The thing that is disturbing about this is that plastic doesn’t degrade. Even if it is shredded or ground into tiny pieces, it is still plastic. It will be here, long after we are gone. It will become part of the ecosystem. It is already being ingested by the smallest zooplankton. Soon it will be within the cells of every living thing. Kind of scary.
While the book has it’s scary parts, it is really an excellent combination of science fact and scientific speculation. It is surprisingly hopeful, in that it seems to show that without us, life will persist and even flourish, which is some sort of comfort.
The book ends with a plea to begin addressing the array of problems identified in the book. Weisman’s most controversial proposal addresses the pressure of population, which he sees as the central issue. He proposes limiting every couple to one child. This would actually reduce world population by mid-century instead if raising it from six to nine billion.
Agree or disagree, the book is thought provoking and an interesting read, especially if you are into science and the environment.

Into the Wild

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 17:50:55 -0500

Book Reviewed: Into the Wild
Author(s): Jon Krakauer
Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday, New York
Copyright Date: 1996
ISBN 0-385-48680-4
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 8 points out of 10

Review: If The Final Frontiersman represents the “Yin” of outdoor stories, then Into the Wild represents the “Yang”. (1) Heimo Korth (The Final Frontiersman) grew up in a blue-collar family experiencing the violent anger of an alcoholic father. He took to the woods at an early age to avoid the anger at home. Chris McCandless, the focus of Into the Wild, grew up in a well–to-do Atlanta family, having money and privilege. Heimo had a first hand, practical knowledge of living in the outdoors. Chris held romanticized notions of escaping to the wild as a form of salvation. Heimo Korth learned and thrived in the Alaskan wilderness for twenty years. Chris McCandless died of sickness and starvation after only four months in a much less remote part of Alaska.
I have read several of Jon Krakauer’s books and they are all great reads. This is no exception. Drawing on police reports, interviews and Chris’s own journals, Krakauer weaves together a complete story from widely dispersed bits of information. Pulling from highlights and margin notes in the books Chris carried, Krakauer paints a picture of a young man who rejects his roots for adventure and romantic ideas of living in nature. Chris has no background or experience to temper his romantic notions. Naming himself “Alexander Supertramp”, McCandless heads out in an old Toyota, making his way through the south, west and upper mid-west before heading for Alaska to go “into the wild”. Along the way, he abandons his car in the desert and gives away all of his savings, some $25,000.00. He lives by working odd jobs and hitching rides. Chris makes good friends along the way, but nothing seems to hold him. Eventually he heads to Alaska to test himself by going “into the wild”. Wilderness was to be his salvation. Yet in four short months it killed him.
The story of how Chris McCandless gave up his privileged life, giving away all his worldly assets to live in trailer camps and work as a common laborer, is fascinating. Even more compelling is the tragedy that befalls his ill-fated expedition into the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer does a masterful job of drawing on sketchy information, mixing it with conjecture and logical consequences to assemble a picture of McCandless’s final months and days. When Alexander Supertramp’s body is finally found by moose hunters, he has been dead for more than two weeks.
This is a great book and a great read. It has been made into a motion picture, which is equally good. I recommend both.

(1) Yin yang are opposing
Yin yang describe opposing qualities in phenomena. For instance, winter is yin to summer's yang over the course of a year, and femininity is yin to masculinity's yang in human relationships. It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite. wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_yang

Through Hiker’s Eyes

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:53:18 -0500

Book Reviewed: Through Hiker's Eyes: Part 1
Author(s): Lawrence (Baro) Alexander
Publisher: Trail Peddler Publishing
Copyright Date: 2008
ISBN
Hard/Softcover:
Reviewed by: Stevie McAllister

Review: I like to do kayak expeditions when time allows. One good source for getting outdoor tips and advice are the various backpacker’s forum web sites. One very active one is at http://whiteblaze.net./. It has lots of posts with good and some bad advice regarding mostly The Appalachian Trail. Many posters were thru-hikers (hiked the full length of the Appalachian Trail, 2,000+ miles). It is a community where a lot of people know each other, had backpacked together and they communicated like they were very familiar with each other. Most had very strong opinions on what to bring and how to live on the trail. I liked this and learned a lot from this and other sites.
One of the members had recently released book one of a two part series titled "Through Hiker's Eyes" and it was getting some hype so I ordered it directly from the Publisher. It arrived three days later autographed by the author. I thought it would be a good book to read during my 45-minute subway commute to and from work. I started reading it last Friday on my way to work and again on my way home. I almost missed my stop, both directions, something I don't normally do. When I got home Friday after work, I continued reading late into the night and again when I had time on Saturday, finally finishing it last night (Sunday). I blew most of my weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.
OK, so what was it about this book? Well it is a basically the first half of a trail journal from when the author hiked the full length of the Appalachian Trail, condensed into one book. The situations were all written in a fun and entertaining way. There were many characters sharing experiences and situations, one of the central characters being "Tummy" the authors stomach. Tummy controlled how far they would hike in a day and where they would stop, based on places to eat and the availability of soft drinks. It is comical, with some adventure mixed in.

If you like this kind of stuff, you'll like this book.

Stevie

PS. You may ask why I don't consider hiking? I don't have many miles left on a bad hip. Maybe some day I'll get it replaced and then hit the Appalachian Trail myself.

Thank you Stevie for this first Guest Book Review. If you would like to contribute (and I hope you will) please check the overview page for the review format, then send the review to me at the email address below.
Yackman

The Lone Survivor

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:54:28 -0500

Book Reviewed: Lone Survivor
Author(s): Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson
Publisher: Little Brown & Company, New York
Copyright Date: 2007
ISBN 978-0-316-06760-7
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Yackman’s Rating: 7 out of 10
Review: This book is advertised as a number one national bestseller. It is “the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL Team 10.” The story is told by Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor of that operation. At the beginning of the book, Luttrell spends a lot of time boasting about being a Navy SEAL and damning the “liberal press”, the Geneva Accords and the Rules of Engagement. As a moderate liberal and a supporter of the Accords and Rules of Engagement, I tried to keep an open mind until I could see where this story was going. Soon Luttrell got into a long description of SEAL training. SEAL training is incredibly difficult. The dropout rate during training is very high; it ran about 60% in Luttrell’s group. Only the most physically able and highly motivated can make it.
Luttrell does make it and is soon shipped off to Afghanistan. After a number of missions, he and three others are selected for a highly dangerous mission high in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. They are to covertly approach and observe a tribal village, looking for a Taliban leader named Sharmak (not his real name). Luttrell’s job, as a skilled sniper, was to get close enough to kill Sharmak. His sniper’s rifle was accurate up to a quarter mile away. Still, with little cover high in the mountains, getting that close would be difficult.
The story really hinges on a moral dilemma faced by the four men when three goat herders, two adult men and a boy, stumble into them as they approached the target village. The Rules of Engagement and the Geneva Accords forbid the killing of non-combatant civilians. But were these three truly non-combatants? If the SEALs let them go, would they run to the Taliban with the information that four Americans were in their mountains? The four men discuss what should be done with the three. Should they kill them and hide their bodies? Or should they let them go?
This was not an easy decision. Sitting safe in my armchair it is easy to say they must let the herders go. It’s not right to coldly kill people who may be totally innocent. But these men were surrounded by Taliban who hated Americans and the very idea that they might be in these mountains. Marcus takes us through the debate between what is right tactically (kill them), what the Rules of Engagement direct them to do (protect non-combatants) and what their own religious beliefs tell them to do (let them go). They had no way to detain them, and detained or dead, they would soon be missed and a search initiated. In the end they vote; one says kill them, one abstains and two, including Marcus vote to let them go, which is what they do.
All of the events that follow, including the deaths of Luttrell’s teammates and those in a rescue helicopter that is shot down in trying to rescue them, flow from this one fateful decision. The goat herders did indeed report directly to the Teliban, who immediately started to hunt for the team. When the fight began, the odds were about twenty-five to one. The story of Luttrell’s fight for survival, the deaths of his comrades, his protection in an Afghan village and his eventual rescue are the stuff of an action adventure thriller, which I’m sure this will be someday.
In the end, I came to respect Marcus Luttrell and his compatriots. I don’t understand the drive to become a warrior, a person trained to kill people and break things. It saddens me to know that we need people like Marcus Luttrell in this world, but we do. And I’m grateful that he and his SEAL brothers are on the job. I came to understand that Marcus’s ranting about the liberal press, the Geneva Accords and the Rules of Engagement all come from that moment of decision when a morally correct choice caused the deaths of so many American soldiers. It’s a decision he now regrets. And he rants about these issues because in his world of right and wrong, good and evil, black and white, the rules that guide his behavior in war are often shaded in gray. Either decision made that fateful day in the Afghan mountains would have been moral or immoral depending on who was looking and what their point of view was. It appears that Marcus Luttrell will be tortured by the decision he made forever. But, had the decision been made to kill the goat herders, he might also be tortured by the memory of coldly killing two men and a boy high on that mountain in Afghanistan. And in the end, the result might have been the same.
All-in-all, the book is a good read and I recommend it.

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:06:39 -0500

Book Reviewed: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
Author(s): Candice Millard
Publisher: Broadway Books, New York
Copyright Date: 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-7679-1373-7
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Yackman

Review: In the winter and spring of 1914, Theodore Roosevelt, after loosing a bid to become the first president elected from a third party, embarked on an ill conceived and poorly designed trip to explore unknown areas of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The trip, which nearly cost him his own life and did cost the lives of three of his men, was an epic of survival and endurance against overwhelming odds. Originally designed as a naturalist trip to collect specimens for the New York Museum of Natural History, the team quickly changed direction when the Brazilian Colonel Candido Mariono da Silva Rondon suggested they map the unexplored ‘River of Doubt”. Roosevelt jumped at the opportunity to step into the unknown and follow in the footsteps of the epic explorers he so much admired.
Quickly trimming his entourage of porters (known as camaradas) and less able explorers, Roosevelt and Randon, now co-leaders of the expedition, headed into the unknown. Roosevelt, too busy to attend to the initial planning of the trip, left those details to others whom he thought were knowledgeable about the requirements of such an undertaking. As a result, he did not know that the man who prepared the gear and supplies for the expedition, one Anthony Fiala, was a failed arctic explorer, with no experience in outfitting a tropical expedition. The result was disastrous.
Plagued with miles of rapids, faulty or inappropriate equipment and insufficient and inappropriate food supplies, the expedition forged on down the river, unable to penetrate an impenetrable rainforest. Always on the edge of starvation, surrounded by unseen but always present hostile Indians, plagued by hoards of biting insects, infested with parasites and sick with malaria and dysentery, the group pushed on through the months of February and March until finally contacting civilization again in April. By this time, Roosevelt was near death, one man had drowned, another had been murdered and a third, the murderer, abandoned to die in the jungle.
This fantastic true story, assembled into a rip-roaring yarn by the author from diaries of the participants and news accounts from the time, was an unexpectedly excellent nailbiter. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys true adventure stories with a significant historical connection.

The Final Frontiersman

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:40:07 -0500

Book Reviewed: The Final Frontiersman
Author(s): James Campbell
Publisher: Atria Books, New York, New York
Copyright Date: 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-5314-X (Pbk)
Hard/Softcover: Softcover
Reviewed by: Don Yackel, a.k.a Yackman

Review: This is the story of the Last Frontiersman, Heimo Korth, an expat from Appleton, Wisconsin. Heimo (pronounced HI-mo, long i and long o with the emphasis on the first syllable) grew up in a typically dysfunctional family, with a mean and violent father. As a boy, he sought refuge in the fields and forests surrounding his home, becoming comfortable with the ways of nature. After dropping out of school, Heimo went to work as a welder in a local factory. He hated the nature of the work and the confinement of being indoors on an eight to five schedule. To cope, he spent many hours consoling himself in the local saloons.
In 1974, Heimo finally made the break he had dreamed of all his life by quitting his job, empting his bank account and heading for Canada’s northern territories. His dream was quickly thwarted when the Canadian authorities did not welcome him with open arms. A young, longhaired American youth heading into Canada in 1974 raised the suspicion that he was a draft evader. Quickly revising his plan, Heimo headed for Alaska.
Himo’s first years in Alaska remind me of Christopher McCandless, the young American, full of romantic notions about living in the wilderness, who looses his life in Jon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild. The difference is that Heimo actually possessed some knowledge of the outdoors. His romanticism was tempered by experience and a keen survival instinct. Heimo also asked questions and showed that he was eager to learn. As a result, he was taken under the wing of several veteran trappers and woodsmen.
Heimo could have died many times during those first few years alone above the Arctic Circle, 150 miles from the closest settlement, eking out a subsistence existence.
But he did survive and thrive. After six years spent mostly alone in the bush, Heimo married Irene, an Eskimo woman from a small village, Savonga. Heimo had known Irene for some time, having visited her village almost yearly to hunt with the locals. Irene joined him in his subsistence existence in the bush where they raised a family. They lived in a small, one room 12 by 14 foot log cabin, with no running water or indoor plumbing. They heated with wood, and it was not unusual for temperatures to drop below –35 degrees for days at a time. They lived by foraging for food, hunting and the money earned from trapping. The children, two surviving daughters, were home schooled by their mother. A third child, their first, died in a terrible accident that nearly took the life of Heimo and Irene as well.
While I don’t rate this book at the top of my all time best list, I did find it very interesting. The author, James Campbell, is Heimo’s cousin. As such, he brings both a journalist’s objectivity and a relative’s insight to the story. He was probably able to get closer to Heimo and his family than others might have because he grew up in the same town, knew many of the same people, and shared relatives and cultural experiences. As a result, we get some depth of feeling related to characters and incidents that might otherwise be lacking. This book is a great tale about perseverance and survival in a stark and beautiful land, and of a man who made a life there against all odds. Heimo Korth may indeed be the last of his kind, the Final Frontiersman.

Non-fiction Adventure Book Reviews

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 06:11:50 -0500

Welcome to this new feature. Click on the link in the menu bar to find reviews of non-fiction adventure books, my favorite relaxation reading. Some of these books will be about paddling, but most will be great yarns of hardship and survival in the outdoors that just happen to be true! I invite your comments, especially if you have read the book yourself Click on “Comments” at the bottom of the review page to agree, disagree or add to the review. It’s easy to do!
If you have read a non-fiction adventure book that you want to write a review on, go to the overview page and look for the Book Review Format, or click on Book Review Format here. Send your review as an MSWord attachment to your comments or as an email attachment to the email address shown at the bottom of each page.

The Book Review Format

Fri, 7 Nov 2008 17:01:22 -0500

If you wish to submit a full book review for publication here, please use the format below. By using this simple format each book review will be laid our the same making it easier for the reader to follow. The easiest way to transfer the format is to copy and paste it into your word processor. You can attach it to a comment or to an email (see below). Please know that I have the right to refuse to publish anything that I deem inappropriate or that might violate some aspect of copyright law. Yackman’s Adventure Book Review Format

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