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ONE BREATH

Name: ONE BREATH
Author: Adam Skolnick
ISBN: 978-0-553-44748-4

FREEDIVING, DEATH, AND THE QUEST TO SHATTER HUMAN LIMITS

by Adam Skolnick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2016

A worthy addition to the growing body of literature on adventures that test the limits of nature and mankind.

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A fatality spurs an inquiry into an extreme sport, illuminating the risks—as well as the rewards—of free diving.

After writing a couple dozen guidebooks for the Lonely Planet series, Skolnick shows sharp reportorial instincts in this multilayered narrative beginning with the 2013 tragedy of Nicholas Mevoli, “the first athlete to die in an international freediving competition.” The obscure sport tests the limits of its athletes, who dive as deep as 100 meters or more, holding their breath for some four minutes, risking blackouts from the pressure or worse. “Their feats dazzled because with each dive they were risking their lives,” the author writes of one such competition. “No one knew where that unknown limit was.” Interspersed with an examination of the sport of free diving—loosely organized, self-governed, with most of the athletes spending considerable sums without sponsorship—is the story of an athlete considered remarkable well before his death and who lived his life with an uncompromising purity—though he always attracted romantic attention, he committed to celibacy for as long as four years—and who made it his priority “to live, not merely exist.” Parallel tracks show Mevoli’s life as he pushed himself toward an early death that quite possibly could have been prevented and the development of the sport as it gained the perspective of mortality that his death underscored. “Nick’s was the first fatality in more than 35,000 dives,” writes Skolnick. “Afterward, they were forced to admit that nobody could say for sure how repeated depths impacted the body….This wasn’t a matter of conflicting science; research was almost nonexistent.” This is a page-turning book about how and why Mevoli died (with a suggestion that a doctor shouldn’t have cleared him to dive), but it’s also about the competitors drawn to the sport, the ones for whom “freediving is both an athletic quest to push the limits of the body and mind, and a spiritual experience.”

A worthy addition to the growing body of literature on adventures that test the limits of nature and mankind.

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-553-44748-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SPORTS & RECREATION | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)