Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival
The creator of TV&#xFFFD;s Survivorman looks at some real-life survival situations and offers his perspective on them. Some will be familiar to many: the 1972 Andes crash of an airplane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team (chronicled in the book and movie, Alive); Chris McCandless&#xFFFD; solo hike into the Alaskan wilderness (subject of the book and movie, Into the Wild). Others less familiar are no less fascinating, such as the plight of the Karluk, a ship that, during the 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition, was trapped several months in an ice pack. Stroud approaches the stories practically: here&#xFFFD;s what these people did, here&#xFFFD;s what they should have done, here&#xFFFD;s what you should think about doing if you&#xFFFD;re ever in a similar situation. He offers intelligent tips&#xFFFD;if you&#xFFFD;re traveling somewhere remote, tell people where you&#xFFFD;re going, take a well-stocked survival kit, and keep a cool head if you get lost&#xFFFD;and he does an excellent job of putting readers into the situations he&#xFFFD;s discussing, making us feel the cold or the panic or the sheer desperation. --David Pitt