If you like survival stories...

Thank you for e-mailing CRRL for a Book Match. You mentioned that you
like non-fiction accounts of survival, such as Skeletons of the Zahara,
Into Thin Air, and the Shackleton expedition. How about checking out
the following books, available at CRRL, if you have not already read
them?



Touching the void / Joe Simpson

"A truly astounding account of suffering and fortitude." --The Times
(London) Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just
reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster
struck.Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking
his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged
as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced
to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own
death. The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both
men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp
consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson
had survived the fall but, crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten,
was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and
spiritual strength, Simpson hopped, hobbled, and crawled over the cliffs
and canyons of the Andes, reaching the base hours before Yates had
planned to break camp. How both men overcame the torments of those
harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival; a
poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship. "Told with
lyrical quality and stunning immediacy, Touching the Void transcends its
genre and becomes accessible to readers who have never had any desire to
climb a glacier." --New York Newsday "A gripping narrative that should
excite armchair adventurers everywhere." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Simpson touches a nerve of the mountaineering community and the hearts
of others." --Los Angeles Times "Riveting, even compulsive reading."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune (catalog summary)



The perfect storm : a true story of men against the sea / Sebastian
Junger

It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet
high - a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that
meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm". When it struck in October
1991, there was virtually no warning. "She's comin' on, boys, and she's
comin' on strong", radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrea Gail off the
coast of Nova Scotia, and soon afterward the boat and its crew of six
disappeared without a trace. In a narrative taut with the fury of the
elements, Sebastian Junger takes us deep into the heart of the storm,
depicting with vivid detail the courage, terror, and awe that surface in
such a gale. Junger illuminates a world of swordfishermen consumed by
the dangerous but lucrative trade of offshore fishing - "a young man's
game, a single man's game" - and gives us a glimpse of their lives in
the tough fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts; he recreates the
last moments of the Andrea Gail crew and recounts the daring high-seas
rescues that made heroes of some and victims of others; and he weaves
together the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and
the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. The
Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that leaves us with the taste of
salt air on our tongues and a breathless sense of what it feels like to
be caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our
understanding or control. We know, on the strength this stark and
compelling journey into the dark heart of nature, what it feels like to
drown. (catalog summary)



We die alone / David Howarth

This 1955 volume is one of the most remarkable survival stories ever
written. Jan Baalsrud was the only survivor of a Norwegian commando team
ambushed by the Nazis during World War II. Wounded and with the Germans
in pursuit, Baalsrud escaped and miraculously fought his way through the
Norwegian tundra to a distant village, where he was saved by locals who
helped spirit him to Sweden. Baalsrud suffered frostbite and
snowblindness, came through an avalanche, and lived to tell the tale.
(Library Journal)



Adrift : seventy-six days lost at sea / Steven Callahan

Callahan, a marine architect, lost his boat in a storm off the Canary
Islands while engaged in a singlehanded race across the Atlantic in
1981. Luckily, he carried far more than the basic emergency equipment
required, e.g., a six-person raft. Before sinking he was able to recover
his emergency equipment bag and his life raft. Callahan admits to having
read the survival accounts of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey ( Staying Alive
, 1974) and Dougal Robertson ( Survive the Savage Sea , 1973) and even
had the latter's manual Sea Survival (1975) with him in the raft. What
makes his story different was his lack of a companion. Through his own
ingenuity he learned how to spear fish, fix his solar still, and even
repair his holed raft. This is a real human drama that delves deeply
into a man's survival instincts. It should be read by anyone venturing
offshore in a small boat. John Kenny, San Francisco (Library Journal)



Alive; the story of the Andes survivors / Piers Paul Read

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players
crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five
original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain
alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond
imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and
inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have
once been unthinkable ... This is their story -- one of the most
astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century. (amazon.com)



The darkest jungle : the true story of the Darién expedition and
America's ill-fated race to connect the seas / Todd Balf

In the 1850s, the world's foremost scientists, capitalists, and
statesmen saw the Darien wilderness in eastern Panama as the perfect
spot to build a great canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Ships from three continents raced to this largely unexplored region, but
the twenty-seven-man U.S. Darien Exploring Expedition, led by an
ambitious, adventure-driven navy lieutenant named Isaac G. Strain, made
sure it got there first. Misled by fraudulent maps and unable to find
any "gap" amid the mass of precipitous peaks, the expedition marched the
untracked course of the isthmus's longest and most contorted river,
enduring oppressive equatorial heat and a terrifying catalogue of often
bewildering tropical maladies. Their ninety-seven-day ordeal of
starvation, exhaustion, and madness -- a tragedy turned largely to
triumph due to the courage and self-sacrifice of their leader and the
seamen who followed him devotedly is one of the great untold tales of
human survival and exploration in the tropics. Based on the vividly
detailed log entries of Strain and his junior officers, other newly
discovered period sources, and Balf's own multiple treks through the
dangerous (and still roadless) Darien Gap, The Darkest Jungle is a rich
and utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who
enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, Isaac's Storm, The Endurance, and other
sagas of adventure at the limits of human tolerance. (Book jacket)



Survivors : true tales of endurance / edited by John B. Letterman

Short vignettes of some of the classic survival stories: The journey of
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca -- Hans Staden: hostage to cannibals --
Captive: the affliction & redemption of Mary Rowlandson -- Marooned: the
story of Alexander Selkirk -- Enslaved: the ordeal of Olaudah Equiano --
The death raft of the Méduse -- The wreck of the whale ship Essex --
Four years in the Arctic: the ordeal of the Ross Expedition -- Black Elk
speaks -- Mawson's trial -- Endurance & courage: Shackleton's heroic
journey -- Saint-Exupéry: prisoner of the sands -- The sinking of the
USS Squalus and the underwater rescue of its survivors -- Escape from
Colditz -- Kazik: The Warsaw Ghetto rebellion & the escape of the
remnant -- Survival in Auschwitz: the drowned and the saved -- Thesiger
in the desert: return to Salala -- Maurice Herzog's Annapurna -- K2: the
savage mountain -- John McCain: prisoner of war -- Explosion on Apollo
13 -- Survive the savage sea -- Alive: air crash in the Andes.



And how about these two, which are not so much about survival, but are
testatments to the courage and resourcefulness of man:

The Right Stuff / Tom Wolfe

Shadow divers : the true adventure of two Americans who risked
everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II / Robert
Kurson

If we can help you find anything else, let us know. Happy Reading!

Michele R. Brown
Reference Librarian