Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.35 You Save: $6.60 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.59 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
Book Review: Focus on opportunity
Summary: 5 Stars
As some one who has engaged in many of the sports and situations mentioned in this book I found this book an excellent source of information on why I have survived an others did not.
In most cases survival is a combination of dumb luck and keeping your head when everyone else is losing theirs so you can take advantage of opportunity.
It provided me a book that I now give to others as a reason why I continue skydiving and in some cases why they survived.
Book Review: Deep Survival: Fear of Flying --Taking Off Is Optional, Landing Is Required
Summary: 5 Stars
Deep Survival, Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales is a riviting, well-told read from the inside and the outside of what makes a human being a survivor. Gonzales, trained in the military arts of paratrooping and reconnaissance, was raised in the shadow of a father who overcame his fear to fly and became a fighter pilot in WWII, only to fall from a plane... and survive. Gonzales knows the conceptual, emotional, and practical obstacles that a human being must face in expected and unexpected danger. What sets his book apart from others is his ability to write from the inside of what it is like to survive and from the outside, using the work of dozens of psychologists and scientists to explain the functioning of the brain.
Gonzales' stories broadly revolve around two scenarios, the trained fighter pilot who uses his mind to suppress emotions in order to fly but who then fails to pay attention to his reality and crashes his plane, and, the novice boatman left to drift at sea without compass, radar, food, or water, yet who finds the will to survive even though he has no training and no tools. Through his lucid prose, Gonzales reveals the human brain that functions at three levels -- analytical, emotional, and visceral. It is when these three levels over function, underfunction, or fail to talk to one another that danger turns into disaster. After all, why does the trained fighter pilot blow it and crash his plane into the ship when his instrument panel, the ship's flight tower, and the flight commander all tell him to abort his landing? Why does the clueless novice figure out how to survive 72 days on the open sea?
For Gonzales, there are two sets of dynamics. First, how are we defining reality? Fighter pilots actually become successful because they can use the analytical part of their brains to follow discrete instructions even though the visceral brain stem is telling them to not fly. Connecting the analytical and visceral regions, the emotional portions of the brain through the successful flying experience bookmarks for the brain, "This sequence of activities leads to happy results and this one doesn't." However, if the pilot comes to see survival just as remembering that one sequence and the scenario changes, the pilot then cannot suspend belief in past experience and thus the organizing part of the brain blocks out the information that contradicts this perspective. Through that disconnect, the brain freezes and the pilot crashes his plane.
Second, if reality is changing, can we change with it? Gonzales tells of survivors, such as the lone sailor, who realizes right from the get go that he is in serious trouble and rather than fit his reality into a preconceived map (which is why it takes experienced hikers longer to realize their lost), he immediately begins to seek out clues for survival.
Gonzales also points out something that I have not seen any adventure or survivor writer observe: The lost find a beauty in their dire situations. I have read most of the mountaineering and sailing accounts that Gonzales retells. Also, I have been lost; faced death, and have rescued others, yet no one but Gonzales has remarked on this odd fact. Retelling the story of Joe Simpson's Touching the Void, the most gripping story of survival I have ever read, he brings to light a certain strength that is present in survivors but overlooked. Gonzales quotes Simpson who is laying atop a pile of ice, knee broken inside an ice crevass, "A pillar of gold light beamed diagonally from a small hole in the roof, spraying the bright reflecions offthe far wall of the crevass. I was mesmerized by the beam of sunliht burning through the vaulted ceiling from the real world outside. It had me so fixated that I forgot about the uncertain floor below and let myself slide down the rest of the slope. I was going to reach that sunbeam....I just knew."
I must admit, the beginning of Deep Survivor struck me as another macho, jock, how-I-made-it-in-the-wilderness survival read. However, this was was more due to Gonzales own awkwardness with his feelings -- that the traumas he had survived were insignificant compared to the exploits of his father. Gonzales finally resolves that fear of insignificance and with humor points out his own capacity for error. He closes his book with a very poignant meditation of gratitude for his father, a man who faced so many threats to his own life and conversely endowed his son with a phenomenal will to live.
The excellent balance between personal emotion and detached analysis makes Deep Survival a wonderful read. I have recommended it to doctors, psychologists, mountaineers, and people of the spirit. They all have come back with resounding praise for the book and found that it spoke to them beyond the confines of science and deeper than the thrills of adventure. Perhaps it is not danger that motivates the human heart, but rather it may be beauty, and life without beauty is not a life well lived.
Book Review: Blah, blah, blah
Summary: 1 Stars
If you are doing a dissertation on the psychology of survival, this is the book for you. Unfortunately, I enjoy how people survive, and would rather get at the story itself, not whether the person has the brain synapses that promote survival. This book has very lengthy, adjective filled paragraphs (ex:"If you could see adreneline, then you'd see a great, green, greasy river of it oozing off the beach..."), lots of references to where he got his information, that could have been better footnoted, and long explanations of a particular psychological reason for a persons survival or demise. Again, dissertation-read this. Entertainment-pass.Book Review: Psychology of Survival, not just a story book!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's too bad people picked up this book looking for a memoir. This isn't a memoir, or a even a story. It's a book on psychology, using stories, and how people have told their stories in order to pull from the rubble some sense of what happens in a survivor's brain that doesn't happen with a non-survivor. And in this it does a good job. The stories help to explain the points the author is trying to make, and elaborate how his theories tie in to real life situations. Don't pick up this book if all you want is an adventure story. But if you want some very real information on how best to deal with a crisis situation, this may one of the books near the top of your list.Book Review: Gave up after 50 pages.
Summary: 1 Stars
I wanted to like this book. I love adventure/survival books. The author, instead of telling a captivating story, mixed a bunch of physiological B.S into the mix which took away from the stories he was trying to tell. Want to read a compelling survival book? Go with "Into This Air" or "The history of the Whaleship Essex" or Endurance- Shackletons Journey.