A provocative perspective on one of the world's most expensive and deadly athletic adventures.
A fast-paced narrative of one of the worst climbing disasters in the history of K2.
Zuckerman and Padoan join forces in this harrowing account of the 2008 mountaineering tragedy on the summit of K2. Presented from the untold perspective of the sherpas, the authors give voice to the men who risk their lives so others may garner fame and fortune. With few other careers choices for these men, they turn aside their cultural differences to aid the rich and famous on their quest to reach the summit while receiving little acknowledgment for their own climbing expertise. In interviews with the sherpas and their families, Zuckerman and Padoan offer glimpses into the climbing culture that are as rare as the thin air the climbers breathe in the Death Zone. Although tradition dictates that K2 is an extremely dangerous mountain to summit, the world continues to press onto her flanks for personal glory or simply to make a statement. In 2008, when the one window of perfect climbing weather briefly opened, too many teams attempted the summit, with fatal results. The authors portray the grueling trek up as well as the gruesome, sometimes deadly ride back down the mountain as avalanches and rock slides picked some climbers off one by one. Readers will be left questioning the need to climb such mountains when many lives are frequently lost, severe frostbite and sickness are common, and the expense of engaging in one climb could be used to support families in the region for many months.
A provocative perspective on one of the world's most expensive and deadly athletic adventures.Pub Date: June 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-07988-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Meditations on hunting, biodiversity, wildlife, ethics, and human folly unify a lifelong bird-hunter's quixotic venture to convert an 800-acre Florida farm into quail heaven. A crack wingshot and professed romantic, de la ValdÇne (a contributor to Field & Stream and other sporting magazines) lived a sportsman's dream, hunting throughout Europe and the US before retreating to an erstwhile tobacco farm near Tallahassee for some large-scale gardening and amateur game management. His devotion to bobwhites is impressive and expensive: He plants crops, clear-cuts or burns acres of forest, and raises a dam to build the habitat and food supply needed to boost quail numbers. This wry chronicle recounts the highs and lows such an audacious project guarantees: Building the dam sans permit to forestall government meddling, he's overcome by red tape after it floods a neighbor's farm and brings a plague of bureaucrats to oversee reconstruction. The highsreveries on nature, hunting, his dogs, and his birds that de la ValdÇne, a world-class daydreamer, can't resistcontribute to the book's charming haphazardness. His genuine love for and keen observation of nature are shaped by predation, and despite his disdain for slob hunters and his understanding of the distaste many nonhunters hold for the sport, de la ValdÇne remains dedicated to hunting, an honorable, primal rite ``as natural as dancing or making love, and just as ancient.'' Unapologetic, he challenges the sacred tenet that hunting pressure is unrelated to declining game populations and castigates sportsmen for shrilly defending second amendment freedoms while industry and human expansion pose the real threat to the sporting life. Beautifully conceived and written, valuable for its insight into quail behavior and its thoughtful address of hunting ethics, a new classic for the sportsman's canon. (First serial to Sports Afield)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-618-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Chicago Bulls coach Jackson (with People editor Delehanty) offers an unusual mixture of New Age advice and basketball knowledge, a sort of Zen and the Art of Pro Hoops. Perhaps the most important thing that Jackson has learned in his many years of basketball, first as a player for the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets, then as a coach in both the minor and major leagues, is that ``winning is ephemeral.'' That is a refreshing attitude for a pro sports coach to take, and it runs throughout this book. Jackson begins his story with Michael Jordan's return to the Bulls toward the end of last season, then flashes back to his own youth in North Dakota. The son of two deeply committed fundamentalist Christians, Jackson has spent much of his adult life trying to reconcile his upbringing with the lessons in Zen Buddhism that he has acquired. Couched in Zen metaphors, his message can be boiled down to two simple precepts: The team is more important than any one player (or coach), and you have to live in the moment, on and off the court, to get the most out of your experiences. Jackson explains succinctly how the Zen Buddhist concern with clearing the mind of impurities to focus on immediate sensation can be put to use in a range of situations. He is surprisingly adept at using examples from NBA play to illustrate seemingly arcane spiritual concepts and, given his resultsthree NBA titles in a row with Chicagoone hesitates to diss him too much. On the other hand, as this season's outcome reminds us, a rebounding power forward is as necessary to winning as a clear mind. Not the goofy, New Age tract you might expect, but probably too abstruse for most basketball fans, with too much basketball for spiritual seekers.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-7868-6206-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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