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HAWKE'S SPECIAL FORCES SURVIVAL HANDBOOK

THE PORTABLE GUIDE TO GETTING OUT ALIVE

Just surfaced in angry seas clinging to the hull of your capsized boat, or crawled from the rubble of a collapsed building following an earthquake? U.S. Army vet and TV survival guru Hawke’s expert know-how may be your best chance to make it home alive.

Eminently readable, this lean, no-nonsense survival guide from the star of the Discovery Channel's Man, Woman, Wild is stocked with real-world advice on how to survive virtually any disaster. Outfitted with generous graphs, illustrations and bullet points, Hawke's guide engages without becoming heavy-handed. Topics range from the importance of survival psychology to in-field immunization. Whatever environment you might find yourself in when catastrophe strikes—jungle, desert, arctic, urban—you’ll likely be prepared as never before. Learn how to snuggle up in a swamp and craft your own water purifier out an old sock and some leftover charcoal. Throughout the tutorial, the author never lets you forget that, in most cases, survival simply comes down to having the right attitude—and often a really sharp stick. Readers sitting in their comfortable living-room chairs may never feel compelled to try and construct their own spring-loaded snare or bamboo fire saw, but there is an undeniable sense of empowerment that comes from at least having some clue as to how to go about it in an emergency. The book is also compact and durable for easy transport. Whether you decide to tote along the handbook on your next intercontinental flight or save it for that long-awaited summer cookout, a priceless resource that’ll pay off even if the cataclysm never hits.

 

Pub Date: April 26, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-7624-4064-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Running Press

Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011

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JUMP

New York's most controversial tabloid sports reporter fouls out in a lazy whodunit. Pro hoops stars Ellis ``Fresh'' Adair and Richie Collins are two kids from the projects who have made it big. African-American Fresh is basketball's most skilled player since Michael Jordan. Richie, a Latino, made his name by getting the ball to Fresh. Together, they bring the New York Knicks to another level and as their reward are admired by millions of strangers—a familiar situation that Lupica milks for all it's worth. Fresh and Richie gain unwanted notoriety when Hannah Carey, a blond fitness instructor with a past, accuses the two of rape. Enter the book's nominal hero, Tony DiMaggio, a former baseball player turned sports sleuth who is hired by the Knicks to get to the bottom of this mess before the cops do. He discovers that Richie, a wolf in point guard's clothing, was indeed the rapist; Fresh, for reasons later made clear, wanted no part of Hannah, who, it seems was infatuated with A.J., yet another Knick. Later, Richie's trouble keeping his pants on earns him an ice pick in the heart—and Fresh is nowhere to be found. As DiMaggio digs up more dirt, he discovers that Fresh is innocent, on the run for more personal reasons. To find Richie's killer, DiMaggio follows the trail of broken hearts leading away from the dead hoopster's coffin. He learns that Richie was a serial rapist who believed that every woman was ``asking for it,'' especially from him, a bona fide superstar. This otherwise interesting bit of insight into the mind of a pro jock serves as the foundation for many red herrings, but the real killer, like the entire book, is obvious. Setting his thriller in the pro basketball universe, Lupica (Dead Air, 1986, etc.) slavishly follows the adage ``write what you know'' but forgets to make it interesting.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-679-40334-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994

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THE FINAL SEASON

FATHERS, SONS, AND ONE LAST SEASON IN A CLASSIC AMERICAN BALLPARK

That’s just right: Stanton’s is another entry in the roster of excellent works devoted to baseball, sure to please fans of...

A fan’s affectionate notes on America’s game—one whose spirit seems to be at grave risk.

Stanton, a Gen-X native of Detroit, is too young to remember the Tigers in their glory. He does, however, have a keen sense of history, one given full air in this account of a season spent in the city’s now-demolished Tiger Stadium. Detroit squads had played there since 1912, when (a few days after the Titanic sank and on the same day that Boston’s Fenway Park opened) Ty Cobb and his teammates faced off against Cleveland’s “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. Stanton’s pages are populated by countless baseball heroes, many of whom (Charlie Gehringer, Al Kaline) are not likely to be known to readers who did not grow up Tigers fans—or to those younger than Stanton. His hero worship for these players is a constant, but he has sharper words for the modern game—and especially for the New York Yankees, a longstanding bête noire whose current six leadoff hitters earn more than the Tigers’ entire roster. The latter-day Tigers turn in only a so-so performance to punctuate Stanton’s meditation on the meaning of baseball to generations of Americans, and on a park that would soon be demolished in favor of a soulless and corporatized replacement stadium that places fans ever farther from the players. Still, as his narrative closes, Stanton lapses into celebratory reveries not unworthy of Field of Dreams: standing in a baseball diamond, he writes, “if you listen beyond the silence, if you listen with your heart, you can hear all sorts of things. You can hear your childhood, you can hear your dad and your uncles, you can hear Kaline connecting, you can hear the muted cheers of distant, ghost crowds, and you can hear your grandpa calling out from the bleachers.”

That’s just right: Stanton’s is another entry in the roster of excellent works devoted to baseball, sure to please fans of the game.

Pub Date: June 15, 2000

ISBN: 0-312-27288-X

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001

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