A book about an impressive trek through unforgiving Western lands that offers a personal reflection and meditation on the...
A middle-aged cycling enthusiast takes a cross-country trip in this travel memoir.
In 2011, Hanson (The Pilgrim Way: Ultralight Bicycle Touring, 2015, etc.) surprised his friends with an announcement. He was planning a cross-country bicycle trip in which he would ride from Big Sur in California to the east coast. It was an ambitious undertaking, but he was undaunted. Though not a professional cyclist, Hanson, 57, had enough experience and know-how, and apparently the stamina, to pull it off. A friend would join the ride in Flagstaff, Arizona. As Hanson departed from Monterey, he hoped for northwest winds to help him reach a respectable goal of more than 100 miles per day. Sometimes the winds cooperated, sometimes they didn’t, but the journey along the Pacific coast and through redwood forests provided a picturesque and soulful beginning to a trip that had more to do with peace of mind than simple achievement. What lay ahead was the desert in summer. Across the Mojave, temperatures in June hovered around 120 degrees, and there were stretches with no services for 75 miles. Good planning and precise calculations tempered the struggle, as did some interactions with business proprietors in remote locales. After the cyclist’s friend Dave Giesler joins the odyssey, the book covers some of the science of riding in pairs against the wind and delves into personal and professional history to highlight what makes the trip important to Hanson. In southern Colorado, the story turns more meditative, inspired by the astonishing scenery, and light philosophizing gives way to a terrific reflection on cycling as a way to balance the need to achieve with the wish to enjoy life. Hanson writes his first-person adventure with enough descriptions of the pains and joys of cycling to pull the story successfully through some slow patches in barren landscapes (and plenty of truck stop breakfasts). He may be determined to accomplish his goal, but his simultaneous desire to improve himself adds a somewhat humble layer to the narrative. The tale concludes in Kansas, with a sequel planned to document the remainder of the journey.
Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9826391-2-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: High Prairie Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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