Buckley's third volume of experiences al sea (following Airborne and Atlantic High) and the fluffiest of the three, full of charm and vacancy. His latest voyage finds WFB trading the Atlantic for the deep, sweet peace of Pacific sunsets. He sets forth on a 4500-mile crossing from Honolulu to New Guinea, with stops along the way at various Edens. He might have started from California, but he couldn't spare the two weeks extra since the Sealestial was not his own yacht and had to be delivered on time. The paradisal voyage has its built-in limitations, starting with the captain's personal messiness: WFB apparently drops wet shorts anywhere underfoot and lets other clothes fall and marinate where they will. He is accompanied by his son Christopher, the writer-Esquire editor, and Richard Clurman, the chain-smoking Time journalist, among others, all of whom are expected to keep private logs that they will later hand over to WFB for distillation. What results, thus, is a book that is all distraetion and padding, with very little straight-ahead narration, Earlier voyages are cannibalized; newspaper articles reprinted whole; David Niven's taped autobiographics are quoted at length. We leap from log to log, and lectures on navigation abound that will interest only fellow yachtsmen. WFB comments that he rarely reads books by those antisocial types who may undertake solo voyages. This snobbery would of course exclude one-legged Tristan Jones' The Improbably Voyage (p. 533), a work of great narrative brio and muscularity, especially when set beside this example of WFB's slack muscles. WFB's voyage is a consciously Grand High Yuppie performance, featuring the usual overwhelming inventory of wines (32 cases at a cost of $2,525.74), beers (50 cases), evening cigars, GooGoo candy bars, Swedish crackers and other delectables, plus a large inventory of classical and jazz cassettes and evening movies for the whole voyage. Even so, at one point, Clurman tells WFB that voyages aren't much fun and are much better to tell about than to experience. Surprisingly, WFB agrees. What with excerpts in The New Yorker and an earlier run-through in Life, and with 200 ravishing color photographs, this coffeetable enricher will likely outstrip its highly successful forebears. What drama appears herein stems mainly from the logs quoted, which show naked nerves.
Pub Date: May 27, 1987
ISBN: 0316114480
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
