Ignore the occasional grandiloquent language and simply enjoy a story of trial, error and, ultimately, achievement.
Chronicle of a failed attempt at a new world rowing record, taken on by a truly motley crew.
In his early 60s, Wilkins’ (In the Land of Long Fingernails: A Gravedigger in the Age of Aquarius, 2009, etc.) visit to an old friend was transformed into an adventurous undertaking. His friend had grand plans to row across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to Barbados with 13 others in a custom-designed and -built boat, chasing the world record of a 33-day crossing. The author decided on the spot that though he had never actually rowed before, he wanted to join the adventure. After months of obstacles for the entire excursion as well as hard training for himself, Wilkins successfully stepped off the Moroccan coast and into a voyage he had underestimated. The author doesn’t just wax poetic about the joys of rowing, as some readers may expect. Instead, he is starkly—though still poetically—honest about the trials of a trip he calls “something botched and bastardized, something at times almost Biblical in its run of torments and dark forces.” In fact, the pain, arguments, sleeplessness and general hardship make up the bulk of the narrative. The magic of Wilkins’ storytelling is in the fact that none of the misery makes the journey seem any less enticing. And while he is as blunt about the deficiencies of his crewmates as their expertise, he never shies away from examining his own faults. This honesty has the effect of lending the rest of his observations credibility. While Wilkins does have a tendency toward flowery language when parsing his experiences for meaning, he tells his tale with gusto.
Ignore the occasional grandiloquent language and simply enjoy a story of trial, error and, ultimately, achievement.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55365-878-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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