Doesn’t answer the question of what makes Viesturs and his fellow mountaineers repeatedly risk life and limb, but certainly...
The bracing story of one man’s 18-year quest to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter-plus mountains.
Viesturs became the sixth man ever to accomplish that feat when he conquered Annapurna in Nepal, in May 2005. Almost equally inspirational is Viesturs’s determination to somehow forge a living out of his passion for mountaineering. He realized early on that he must choose between his veterinary practice and his love for mountain-climbing, initially scrambling to earn a living as a house-builder and mountain guide until the idea of climbing all 14 of the world's highest peaks sent some corporate sponsors his way. Some unavoidable repetitions occur as we follow Viesturs and his various partners up and down the Himalayas, and the narrative never quite manages to make us appreciate the grueling conditions of the climb, or the sheer wonder of reaching the summit. Still, the author does a good job of outlining the logistics of mountaineering: the dizzying trails leading to base camp, the truckloads of clothing and gear required, even the difficulties of relieving oneself at 26,000 feet. In addition to his own remarkable story, Viesturs provides valuable portraits of the many other mountaineers, past and present, who climbed and sometimes perished on the same mountains. Particularly fascinating is his own account of the 1996 tragedy on Mt. Everest, made famous by Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. (Viesturs and his partners, having decided against a summit attempt due to deteriorating conditions, passed on their way down the doomed team of climbers heading up.) A self-described “purist” who reached most of his summits without the use of supplemental oxygen, the author invites our awe for the early mountaineers who braved life-threatening conditions without the high-tech gear available to climbers today.
Doesn’t answer the question of what makes Viesturs and his fellow mountaineers repeatedly risk life and limb, but certainly inspires respect for their monumental efforts.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-7679-2470-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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