Adults of any age who are curious about hiking and camping may blaze happy trails after reading this energetic book.
This gentle beginner’s guide offers first steps for safe and satisfying outdoor adventures while covering everything from trailheads to thunder trees.
Retiree Klopovic (Effective Program Practices for At-Risk Youth, 2003) teams up with first-time–author/daughter Nicole—who’s hiked Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range—to present a sensible hiking how-to for out-of-shape baby boomers. This breezy, friendly manual is divided into four main parts: “Preparation” (on deciding where and when to hike), “The Whole Person” (about getting in shape physically and mentally), “Packing Essentials” (regarding, for example, whether “To Tent or Not to Tent”), and “Hitting the Trail.” Although the book is aimed at novices, its seasoned advice isn’t patronizing, which is refreshing in itself. It begins with important safety basics, such as finding out where trailheads (the beginnings of trails) are located in order to avoid getting lost. There’s plenty of hands-on advice, such as the best way to pack a backpack (diagram included), and the book covers familiar camping topics, such as how to hang a “bear bag,” a food container designed to thwart hungry bears, as well as how deep to bury human waste after “visiting the thunder tree.” The book also includes black-and-white photos and memorable anecdotes from a coast-to-coast hike in England, including one about a beer-drinking dog. The simple checklists and charts, such as the “Hiker’s Timeline of Milestones,” are helpful preparation tools, as the Klopovics recommend six months of planning before setting out. The authors are realistic but optimistic, placing emphasis on common-sense exercise and noting that although mature hikers may not sprint up hills like 20-year-olds, they can still gain many mind-and-body benefits from sleeping under the stars. This guide is methodical in its approach but pleasant to read, as it’s sometimes reminiscent of an uplifting life coach: “And keep your eyes on the hiking prize. You will experience life as you never have.” Other times, there’s humor: “Granola may have an adverse effect on the digestive system, and you don’t want to be asked to hike last in line.”
Adults of any age who are curious about hiking and camping may blaze happy trails after reading this energetic book.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Affinitas Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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