Laced with suspense, but not exactly another Perfect Storm, this will appeal more to real sailors than armchair salts.
A well-detailed, fast-paced chronicle of the Sunday Times of London’s 1968 Golden Globe Race, in which nine men attempted to sail nonstop around the world alone.
Writing with the authority of an experienced sailor, author Nichols (Sea Change, 1997) chronicles each competitor’s boatbuilding obstacles and progress at sea, and he attempts to delve into the psyches of these sea-obsessed men by drawing on their personal logs. He reveals the shocking risks these men take—separation from family, loneliness, bankruptcy, and death—for Golden Globe glory. His characters—numerous and difficult to differentiate—include Bernard Moitessier (a melodramatic French yoga guru), Nigel Tetley (a Royal Navy lieutenant commander who is civilized to a fault), Chay Blyth (a competitive he-man), and Donald Crowhurst (a failed businessman). Thoroughly versed in boatbuilding, Nichols foreshadows the grim events that unfold in the water by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each boat. The participants’ motives are mixed: while some were enticed by prize money or patriotism, others had more intriguing incentives. Moitessier, for example, felt a need to discover his inner-self in solitude, and he resented the Sunday Times for intruding on his spiritual journey. Blyth, who had never sailed before, simply wanted to beat his former transatlantic rowing partner, who happened to be competing that year. As these men made their journeys with only radios to keep them company, Nichols shows us what the combination of isolation, malfunctioning boats, and fear of drowning can do to a man. The most interesting story is Crowhurst’s: Convinced that he was going to win the prize money, he used his family’s business and home as collateral for his backers, supplied the press with false data, and led the public to believe that he was some 4,000 miles closer to the finish than he really was.
Laced with suspense, but not exactly another Perfect Storm, this will appeal more to real sailors than armchair salts.Pub Date: June 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019764-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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