A harrowing and somewhat surreal account of life on the distant fringes of civilization.
As might be expected, Ross’s memoirs are filled with adventures and close calls with wild animals in beautiful, natural settings—but what makes it memorable is his vivid account of surviving an attack by murderous Hutus armed with machetes.
A wildlife biologist who has been working full-time as a safari guide since 1986, Ross has had his clothes stolen by hyenas, been chased by lions and buffaloes, and once made a narrow escape from a herd of charging elephants. He specializes in leading small groups into the East African bush—armed with cameras, however, rather than guns. With the aid of his trusty Land Cruiser and a six-seater Cessna, he takes his clients to private wildlife reserves and mobile campgrounds in national parks, where he makes sure they get close to the wildlife they have come to see. They make their way to the banks of the Mara River, where they watch 1,500-pound crocodiles turn the annual migration of zebras and wildebeest into a horrific feeding frenzy; they hike into Uganda’s Impenetrable Forest for close-up views of rare mountain gorillas. It was there, in 1999, that he and members of his group were attacked by a rebel army of Rwandans who had crossed the Congo border. Caught by surprise in the pre-dawn attack, he was taken captive and beaten, two of his clients were hacked to death, and many others were either murdered or kidnapped—a tragedy that is unmatched by any of Ross’s life-and-death encounters with wild animals in the bush. The wildlife stories reveal a quiet humor, an observant eye, and a deep love of and respect for nature—but the massacre in the Impenetrable Forest and its aftermath change the tone of this account from an appealing selection aimed at natural history buffs and armchair adventurers to an appalling reminder to all that the most dangerous beasts out there are human.
A harrowing and somewhat surreal account of life on the distant fringes of civilization.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6672-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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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