2 comments about Vanished!: Explorers Forever Lost.

1. This short but diverting read tells the stories of 8 different disappearances while exploring. The prose is somewhat inelegant and relies on colloquial expressions and the author's imaginings of possible events as much as on plain facts and scholarly vocabulary. The book's subjects -- Ambrose Bierce, Percy Fawcett, Glen & Bessie Hyde, Everett Ruess, Amelia Earhart, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Michael Rockefeller, and Johnny Waterman -- make for engaging reading. It's just a shame that it's all over so soon. Perhaps Balkan didn't feel it necessary to go too much in-depth about the circumstances of the disappearances and the details of their lives before their final journeys, but in that case I wish he had produced a lengthier tome by including some of the other missing explorers of the 19th and 20th centuries. All in all, it's a surface-deep read, but the author clearly did a fair bit of research and it will certainly be entertaining for those unfamiliar with these ill-fated individuals.



2. VANISHED! EXPLORERS FOREVER LOST by Evan Balkan is good. Really, REALLY good. Suspenseful, concise portraits of 9 adventurers, some famous and others more obscure, include:
   
   Amelia Earhart
   Antoine de Saint-Exupery
   Ambrose Bierce
   Glen & Bessie Hyde
   Percy Fawcett
   Everett Ruess
   Michael Rockefeller
   Johnny Waterman
   
   It is easy to either lionize or denigrate out-sized personalities, but Balkan is clear-eyed and compassionate. Adventurers are placed into context: how the person fit into their own era, and the impact of their disappearance on society and their families. A book revolving around tragedy might easily be dark and depressing. VANISHED! is not: Balkan leavens the subject matter with a wry turn of phrase at just the right time. He also discusses the meaning of adventure and risk, and its importance to even the most sedentary "armchair explorer".
   
   Exhaustive research seems to have gone into this book. As a climber of 20+ years and an extensive collector of mountaineering literature, I have long been familiar with Johnny Waterman's sad saga. Balkan delineated Waterman's familial background concisely, setting into context Johnny's epic climb of Mt. Hunter in a way the non-climber could understand and appreciate. Yet, VANISHED! included details new to me. Kudos to Balkan's well-done homework, utilizing essential citations such as Glenn Randall's little-known book, Breaking Point: Challenge on Alaska's Mt. Hunter, THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, and personal communications.
   
   My only "complaint" is that VANISHED! was too short. The book is a good value, but Balkan is a gifted author and I would have enjoyed reading more. One is hoping that his next book will have "covers that are a long way apart."
   
   

No comments about Half Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles E. Conrad.

No comments about Holding Fast: The Untold Story of the Mount Hood Tragedy.

1 comments about On High: The Adventures of Legendary Mountaineer, Photographer, and Scientist Brad Washburn.

1. The biography of Brad Washburn makes a terrific yarn, even for us armchair adventurers. This is a well-told tale, with a transcribed "oral history" from Mr. Washburn, interspersed with the narrative supplied by Mr. Smith. The significance of Mr. Washburn's life, and what makes this book worth reading, is that his mountaineering adventures were part of the 20th century's final conquest of high places in this world. The high mountains were the last frontier, and Mr. Washburn lived it, wrote about it, mapped it, and (more importantly) photographed it. Fortunately, National Geographic chose to include a variety of Mr. Washburn's best photographs. His friendship with, and admiration for, Ansel Adams is apparent. Buy this for the read, but also buy it as a coffee table book.

No comments about Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale (Penguin Classics).

4 comments about Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy.

1. The history of Arctic exploration is not a subject I've ever had a particular interest in. I picked this book up more or less by chance, was intrigued enough to buy it ... and haven't been able to put it down. The story itself is absolutely gripping from beginning to end, but it's the intelligence and skill of the writing that makes this such a memorable and remarkable book. Wonderful. Six stars.



2. I particularily like the subtitle to this book, 'a life of courage and tragedy.'
   
   Scott was undoubtedly courageous. He could not have been otherwise. On the other hand, his courage and drive to get to the South Pole was not exactly balanced by experience or perhaps by common sense. There's an old saying that if you wanted to get somewhere like the South Pole, Scott would have been a good leader to follow, but if you wanted to get back, then other expedition leaders like Shackleton would be your first choice. Shackleton's quotation: 'Better a live donkey than a dead lion.' Consistent with this, Scott got to the South Pole, Shackleton didn't. Scott didn't get back.
   
   In this book, the author is clearly a deep admirer of Scott. And indeed he did great things. Coming from a humble beginning he appeared driven to accomplish things, and he did. He was a complicated man, and Mr. Crane's access to the family papers and Scott's letters give a view that is perhaps more balanced than what we have seen before.
   
   If nothing else, Mr. Crane is an excellent writer and the story becomes one of those can't put down books.



3. The book is dreadful. It continually refers to other expeditions that the average reader will not know about. The writing is random and its impossible to follow the thread. There are also many deliberate and irrelevant literary references just inserted to be clever. A great subject that I w\as looking forward to, treated very badly by a pseudo intellectual. Try as I might I could not finish it.



4. David Crane shows how the death of the explorer Captain Scott galvanized the UK on the edge of World War I, but he qualifies British response to the tragedy by pointing up that, despite the weight of popular opinion, the pre-war Edwardian years were not exactly the Golden Age of empire the way they are nowadays painted. Crane's life of Scott is in every way a re-revisionist biography, kicking against what he feels has been the unfair denigration of Scott's life and deeds over the past thirty years.
   
   Sometimes this approach works, sometimes it doesn't. Through meticulous handling of evidence, he tells the story without a hint of strain, and yet sometimes whole paragraphs stop the action to argue that history has shafted Scott once again. A prototypical Englishman in the days when "God was an Englishman," Scott has suffered from unthinking backlhas, or so says Crane, and indeed he says it about four hundred times so that, frankly, I began to sympathize with Scott's attackers a bit, for no one's that perfect.
   
   Indeed Crane admits as much, citing his rivalry with Shackleton and then finally with Amundsen as proof, but in each case, the other man is deeply at fault and Scott was just trying to muddle through on Naval smarts and years of experience leading men. It was a time for heroics, and something in the air (together with a thriving media culture) made heroes out of the most unlikely souls. England expected every man to do his duty, and alas so did Norway and Amundsen came home with the gold, so to speak, whereas the Englishmen after the same glittering prize were all dead by the time Amundsen returned home. "The Englishmen, the goal accompished," bleated the press, "lay quiet in the snows. Through the months since . . . while wives and friends set forth for meetings and counted time, they lay oblivious. All was over for them long ago."
   
   Beyond the heroics of the era, Crane attributes the legend of Captain Scott to his indispitable skill as a prose writer. There is something macabre about the veneration given to his last journal, found by the relief party, but it's a bizarre twist totally understandable in the context, the words that live on after the hand that wrote them has grown cold and still. Without that last journal, its reinscription of subaltern heroics, its narrative of deprivation and memory and love, how else would Scott be remembered? In this regard Crane has an interesting passage about the way in which Westminster Abbey had its own little competition going on with St. Paul's Cathedral about which site had the most pomp and had the most heroes of empire commemmorated there.

5 comments about The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths.

1. Maybe I shouldn't write my review, because I didn't finish the book, but it just isn't good. This is supposed to be a tragic story of a father and son that lose their life to a sport they thoroughly enjoy, yet all I get from the writing is a couple of guys who are arrogant and immature. Chowdhury goes between writing technical diving information to dialogue between characters, that reads hollow and adolescent. Not a good read for me. If you're into diving and wrecks, ready Kevin McMurray. He's BRILLIANT!!!



2. This isn't Shadow Divers. This isn't written like a NY Times bestseller. It doesn't intensify or create drama like some other books do to try to captivate your interest. This book is written by a diver and is most appreciated by a fellow diver. Some complain of tangents which they say detract from the father and son story. These only serve to richen the experience for me. It not only tells the story but teaches valuable lessons and makes a diver desire further understanding on the many subject which are touched upon.



3. If you are looking for a great book about scuba diving you search has ended. The last dive is amazing and is a great story about a diving family and their quest for improvement.



4. "The Last Dive" is a very engaging read that is every bit as much about why people take risks at the edge of human ability (diving, mountain climbing, racing, etc.), their personalities, and their weaknesses, as it is about Chris and Chrissy Rouse and their fatal dive on the U-Who.
   
   Although I found "Shadow Divers" and "Deep Descent" a bit more riveting; after the somewhat flowery prose of the initial couple of chapters, "The Last Dive" did an excellent job of bringing me into the club of elite cave and wreck divers, introducing the history and exploits of the key divers including the Rouses, helping to understand a bit of what motivates these divers to make the deep dives and take the risks they do, introducing some of the key wrecks that help to set the stage, and taking you inside the head of the author as he experiences the same fascination, thrill, fever, risk, and pain of a dive gone bad.
   
   The author is a friend of many of the key divers and has personally made many of the same cave and wreck dives and has been through a serious episode of the bends, so he knows what he is talking about. He does a good job of describing technical issues in lay terms, so "The Last Dive" will engage the diver and non-diver alike.
   
   While the lives and personalities of Chris and Chrissy Rouse are a thread running through "The Last Dive"; it is just as much the author's story and that of the other deep wreck divers who take the same risks, and their inner needs and drive to do so. Once you get through the first two chapters, you will find "The Last Dive" to be a page-turning adventure.
   
   Definitely read the postlog chapter, "Ever Deeper". It's not the same rate of adventure as the rest of the book, but the additional information about many of the divers, advances in the science and psychology of deep wreck diving, and further information about identifying the U-Who (covered better in Shadow Divers) is worth the additional reading.



5. One of my favorite dive books. The story of a father and son dive team and their tragic accident. Well written and gripping story of what happens when you get complacent. Just a good book that really pulls you in and keeps you in till the end. Written in a way to really get you attached to the characters.

2 comments about Daniel Boone: An American Life.

1. This book tells how Dniel showed honesty and cofidince. Everything about Daniel Boone is in this book. If you have a report due on a leader this is want you want. I prefer this book to anyone.



2. I blame television. When reading _Daniel Boone: An American Life_ (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael A. Lofaro, I realized that I didn't know anything about Daniel Boone. I thought he wore a coonskin cap and was a contemporary of Davy Crockett, and maybe fought at the Alamo. I discovered at the end of the book that Lofaro blames television, too. Boone's fame to my generation comes from "...Fess Parker playing the lead in _Daniel Boone_, a historical disaster for baby-boomers who still confuse Boone with Crockett" because Parker sequentially played one then the other in the mid-fifties. Lofaro had insight on my own ignorance, and his book is shot through with impressive scholarship that takes Boone, as much as possible, from myth and tall tales (and television-inspired error) and puts him into realistic historical perspective. There is plenty here that is inspiring, and fit for legend-making, and also plenty to show that Daniel Boone had essential trouble in managing to get along with society. And also (_pace_ Davy Crockett), Boone hated coonskin caps.

   He was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, to devout Quakers. His rudimentary schooling shows up in many excerpts from his writings here; for instance, it seems to be true that on an East Tennessee tree he carved the inscription "D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760." Boone did indeed become an accomplished woodsman and hunter, and was always less fit for the life of frontier farming. He had a pattern of reaching out to new lands; he had a wanderlust, to be sure, and encroaching civilization always meant that he had to move to new frontiers to hunt game, but he was always eager to apply the simple solution of moving away when having people live around him was just too complicated. He would be on the move all his life. He fought for the British (along with Washington) in the French and Indian War, and then against the British in the western version of the American Revolution, which consisted mostly of fighting Indians. He had prodigious skill in the outdoors, and there are many stories here of heroism and craftiness. Although he could always win battles against Indians, he could not win against lawyers, and was often in court because of disputed boundaries he had surveyed. He was guileless and always assumed that treating someone honestly would get him honest treatment in return, an assumption that he never seemed to learn was unwarranted.

   Boone was amazed that he became famous. There was a bogus autobiography printed in 1784, that was translated into German and French, and made Boone internationally known. He was painted by the young John James Audubon. James Fennimore Cooper based much of Natty Bumppo on him, and in a note to one of the Leatherstocking Tales said that Boone headed out from Kentucky to Missouri in later life "because he found a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded." Tales of Boone's dry wit became staples. He did indeed, when asked if he had ever gotten lost in the wilderness, reply, "No, I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." He blazed trails, most notably through the Cumberland Gap, and then was dismayed that they became widened for wagon travel and further encroachment by civilization. Ending up in Missouri, he spent his last years hunting buffalo and trapping beaver. He died at 85, as the nation was pushing further west and the wilds were more speedily declining. Lofaro's informative biography puts the brilliant pioneer and naïve citizen at the center of a complicated and longstanding war between settlers and Indians.

No comments about Warrior Of Light - The Life Of Nicholas Roerich (Masters of Life Series).

No comments about Rough Riders: Hawaii's Paniolo and Their Stories.