by Matt Dickinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999
Everest again, May 1996 again, this time on the Tibetan side, in a tedious, self-obsessed account from filmmaker Dickinson. While Krakauer and company were toiling up the southern, Nepalese side of Everest three years back, Dickinson was part of a commercial climb on the North Face. He was there to film the third attempt of Brian Blessed, the English comedic actor, to reach the top. Dickinson was also there to do a little soul-searching, to make some hard decisions about his wanderlust, which was so difficult on his wife and family (though why he would choose that milieu, when one’s attention is best riveted to matters at hand, is a puzzle). Dickinson makes amply clear that he was unhappy, angry, or scared most of the time he spent of the mountain’s flank, and he shares his misery generously with his readers. There is none of the time compression and tight focus, none of the dread that pervades most fine writing on difficult climbs. Dickinson likes to whine: about the cold and the wind and the physical punishment; about the difficulties of going to the bathroom, let alone filming, at such an altitude; about the quality of the food and the impatience of the yak drivers and an obtuse Chinese bureaucracy. Dickinson acts as though he—d been dropped on the mountain against his will. And when the rogue storm that savaged the climbers on the other side hit, Dickinson was safely in camp. Then, getting his chance to make a summit push, he unilaterally decides to abandon his climbing partner, who has dropped out of sight, with a crass “summit fever had me body and soul.” He thumps his chest, the soul-searching long forgotten. If Dickinson’s spirit was as sour on the mountain as it is in this book, his partners would be forgiven for wondering which was the greater menace: the cruelty of the high-altitude world or Dickinson’s presence in it. (16 pages color photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8129-3159-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
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
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by Jeanne Marie Laskas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2015
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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