An enthralling profile of a storm enthusiast and adrenaline junkie who took his intense interest to extreme measures.
An adroit biography of a thrill-seeking storm chaser.
Dubbing tornadoes “the only real dragons the modern world has left,” journalist Hargrove, a weather fanatic himself, chronicles the life of the intrepid Tim Samaras. The author charts Samaras’ fascination with twisters back to an inquisitive childhood, when he was transfixed by the tempest in The Wizard of Oz and the raw power of severe weather systems in his native Colorado. From youthful tinkering to an early gig at the Denver Research Institute to becoming a prominent self-made engineer, Samaras also got married and had a son (whom he dressed as a foam tornado for Halloween). He dove head-first into his obsession after accessing real-time weather technology and meteorological gadgetry, which, as it advanced in sophistication over the decades, only served to heighten his insatiable curiosity and boundless enthusiasm to stand “inside the lungs of a storm.” An autodidact, he amassed knowledge and an impressive skill set through his experiences working for and in conjunction with a variety of tornado scientists and enthusiasts. Samaras constructed his own weather instruments and logged countless hours locked in the paths of tornadoes across the Midwest, the Southeast, and beyond. Hargrove refreshingly contributes quality information on what intrigues and motivates storm chasers, their unique camaraderie, and the evolution of the sophisticated tracking equipment in use today. The author, who never met Samaras, builds his biography through recordings, interviews, research, extensive video footage, and connections with his family, friends, colleagues, and “chase buddies.” Despite repeated warnings by peers that his increasingly perilous chases were venturing toward the suicidal, Samaras remained addicted to “the euphoric rush of pulling up just in time to see the cloud wisps gather and descend.” Samaras perished after being swept up in a tornado in Oklahoma in 2013, but Hargrove’s debut biography honors his legacy as an unparalleled storm chaser.
An enthralling profile of a storm enthusiast and adrenaline junkie who took his intense interest to extreme measures.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4767-9609-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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
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