In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley
by Jonathan Waterman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan WatermanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-07-01
ISBN: 1558217266
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: The Lyons Press
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Book Reviews of In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley
Book Review: COMPELLING
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read countless books of this genre, and this is one of the best of it's kind. This is an incredible book, hands down. What makes this particular book stand apart? The stories the writer tells, after all, come with the territory - hubris plagued wannabees getting stuck on the mountain and being rescued (or not); ego-driven exploites and feuds amoung climbers; the requisite bodily suffering; the more infrequent triumphs on pinnacles that are mythical to most of us. Crack open any mountaineering book and you get all of that. What you don't get in some of those other books, however, this one provides in magnificent detail - the real, human, gut reaction to being right in the middle of it all. This author does not write obliquely. There is nothing recondite about any point he tries to make. It's the stories in this book that draw you in, but it's the candour and the honesty of the writing that keep you there. Take, for example, the author's depiction of a friend's inability to reconsile himself with the modern world and his sad, subsequent demise. The author invites you to become friends with the guy yourself by revealing his small acts of kindness and his prevailing innoscense. You empathise with the guy, you like the guy, and only then do you read about his self-inflicted free-fall. Or the author's illuminating, compassionate portrayal of the "other" John Waterman. The author introduces you to this long deceased climber and his father both. He takes you into the complex intensity of their relationship and parallels it with John's equaly intense relationship with the mountains. And then he jars you with an emotional account of a false reunion between father and son. It's haunting. The best case in point, however, is the comparison the author draws between a climbing friend's nobel death inside a frigid crevasse (a death so insidious, as far as I'm concerned, that if there was ever a movie made about it I wouldn't go near the theater), versus the helicopter rescue of some gossipy dilitantes who demanded that the pilot stop for fast food on their way to being safely delivered from their own stupidity. The author doesn't just tell the tale of another senseless rescue or another tragic accident. He forces the reader to really think about it, by conjuring two situations of opposite extremes and rendering an obvious conclusion in the comparison. His unique, bipartisan involvement in both these situations made it possible to give first-hand accounts of each. Yet he's certainly far from bipartisan with his sympathies and he's not afraid to share these opinions with the reader. Any hack writer can reproduce information on paper. Waterman infuses his work with feeling. One last word - look at "A Requeim For the Bears" as a call to arms rather than just tossing the book aside when you're done. It's the real deal, and we all need to do something about it. And that's MY opinion.
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