Surviving Deep Survival
I just finished reading Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival , which I guess is about the psychology of surviving. I disliked it a great deal and would absolutely not recommend it, except for the appendix which makes up the last 20 pages. The book is a very unorganized collection of ideas from Zen, Tao Te Ching , Heroditus, philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. It's also an attempted memoir, a tribute to Gonzales' pilot father, and a collection of very short re-tellings of survival tales. I know, sounds great, right? But in trying to do all these things, and jumping around between them, it ends up doing none of the above well. Also, you may already know some of the survival accounts from Alive , Adrift , and Touching the Void , and the original accounts are far more interesting. The stories you've likely never heard of are re-told with aggravatingly little detail. I was also irked by Gonzales' repeated mentions of spirituality and following hunches, but it's no...