Ably translated and edited by Australian climber Marshall, this will be of great interest to mountaineering buffs, and to...
Well-made compendium of adventures—and misadventures—on some of the world’s highest peaks.
In his day, Italian adventurer Bonatti was among the world’s best-known climbers, having established daring new routes on some of the most forbidding mountains of the Alps, many accomplished on solo climbs without oxygen. This collection, a volume in a series edited by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air, 1997, etc.), gathers portions of several of Bonatti’s climbing memoirs, some of which were published in English editions but have long been out of print. As adventure writing, the memoirs are often standard fare: I came to a peak, I climbed it (or, in some cases, failed to climb it), I endured harrowing weather and the possibility of swan-diving into the abyss. Bonatti, however, is both more modest and more reflective than many of his contemporaries and successors (Reinhold Messner comes to mind); mountains, he writes, “are no more than the reflection of our spirit. Each peak is big or small, generous or mean, in proportion to what we offer it and what we ask of it.” Much of the book is given over to documents relating to Bonatti’s ill-fated climb of the Himalayan peak K2 in 1954, which, he notes with considerable understatement, “turned out to be more complicated and full of surprises than had been expected.” The junior member of an Italian national team, Bonatti was accused of abandoning his fellow climbers to scale K2 by himself and thus claim the honor of being the first to the summit; senior members charged that he had left them without sufficient oxygen, although two did make it to the top. Bonatti’s defense is vigorous and convincing, although it will doubtless not prove to be the final word in a controversy that has gone on for more than four decades.
Ably translated and edited by Australian climber Marshall, this will be of great interest to mountaineering buffs, and to armchair adventurers generally.Pub Date: March 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-75640-X
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
Smith offers a straightforward account of the heady world of professional football as he describes his recent seasons as the premier running back of ``America's Team,'' the Dallas Cowboys. In telling how a poor Florida boy became a multimillion-dollar star, Smith shows that modern football plays many roles in America today: It's an art, a thing of magic, a way of life—but most of all a gritty and competitive business (and for stars like Smith, a lucrative profession). Smith talks about his sandlot heroics, his childhood dream of becoming a star for the Cowboys, and the constant doubts his size raised about his ability to compete (in childhood he was too big, as a pro too small, said his detractors). Smith's account of his football career is, however, a success story from the beginning: He was a standout in high school and at the University of Florida. Dismayed, he says, by the instability of the Florida program, Smith left prior to his senior year in order to participate in the NFL draft. Picking Smith in the first round, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson signed him for $3 million for three years (throughout Smith's account, stories of his numerous contract negotiations loom as large as his tales of on-field feats). With the Cowboys, Smith emerged as a player of big words and big deeds, making cocksure comments but placing first among rookie rushers his first season, subsequently leading the NFL in rushing, becoming the youngest player to rush for 1,500 yards, appearing in three Pro Bowls, and leading his team to consecutive Super Bowl victories. Smith's account, written with the help of Delsohn (coauthor of John Wayne, My Father, not reviewed) culminates in his amazing 1993 season, when he won the rushing title, the season MVP award, and the MVP award for the Super Bowl. A pleasant, absorbing look at life in the NFL—from the top. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59985-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
The athletes and their story deserve better.
An American doctor covers the trials of the men who bioengineered East Germany’s champion swim teams.
Ungerleider, a sports doctor and consultant who obviously knows his way around international athletics, sets out to document the prosecution of the East German officials responsible for plying hundreds of teenage athletes with steroids during the cold war. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the East German state developed a program of “supportive measures”—a euphemism for drug and doping treatments—that were used to turn promising teenagers into überathletes who dominated Olympic and international competitions. In addition to broad backs and low swim times, however, the drugs also led to exaggerated male sexual characteristics in women, devastating psychological traumas, serious long-term health problems, and a rash of birth defects. Now, led by Professor Werner Franke, a crusading scientist, and Brigitte Berendonk, a former swimmer, many of the doped athletes are bringing civil and criminal suits against the doctors and trainers who gave them the little blue pills in the first place. Ungerleider has a great story: a tragedy with ties to the Holocaust, communism, nationalism, science, justice, feminism, and the other epic themes of the 20th century. Unfortunately he botches it terribly, and the end result is little more than an overblown, repetitive magazine article with no apparent organizational principle and writing so bad one wonders if it was just shoddily translated from German. The legal context of the trials is never explained, the narrative is nearly impossible to follow, and even the medical science dissolves into static. It makes things only worse that the babble is interspersed with snippets that strive for the heroic and fall miserably short.
The athletes and their story deserve better.Pub Date: July 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26977-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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