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Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why | 
 enlarge | Author: Laurence Gonzales
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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You Save: $10.95 (73%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  139 reviews
Sales Rank: 2531
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 318
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0393326152
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.69
EAN: 9780393326154
ASIN: 0393326152
Publication Date: October 30, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Writing Present Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
"Unique among survival books...stunning...enthralling. Deep Survival makes compelling, and chilling, reading."—Penelope Purdy, Denver Post After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference? Examining such stories of miraculous endurance and tragic death—how people get into trouble and how they get out again (or not)—Deep Survival takes us from the tops of snowy mountains and the depths of oceans to the workings of the brain that control our behavior. Through close analysis of case studies, Laurence Gonzales describes the "stages of survival" and reveals the essence of a survivor—truths that apply not only to surviving in the wild but also to surviving life-threatening illness, relationships, the death of a loved one, running a business during uncertain times, even war. Fascinating for any reader, and absolutely essential for anyone who takes a hike in the woods, this book will change the way we understand ourselves and the great outdoors.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 134 more reviews...
Deep Survival August 19, 2008
This book is a must read for anyone who hikes or travels into the wild or beyond your own backyard. Gonzales tells a great story and helps you understand the risks when outside our civilized comfort zone. This is particularly important read for those who camp and hike and venture into the "wild".
Awesome. The Entertaining Psychology of Survivors August 12, 2008
Impressive, it exceeded expectations. I did not have great hopes of loving this book and had passed it by for years, even though the topic is right up my alley. Well, I was surprised to find this interesting, engrossing and remarkably fresh.
I'd heard all the survival stories in the book before, but the author put a fresh spin on them and kept it suspenseful. The mix of survival stories, anecdotes and psychological discussion are well-balanced.
I highly recommend this book.
 Could have been much better August 4, 2008
This is a nonfiction book set in the framework of a thriller. Gonzales frustratingly leaves stories in suspense. He often interrupts a gripping real-life story with pages of interpretation, some of it irrelevant and forced, and all of which could have been left until after the story finished. Besides this, his connections are often pretentiously esoteric (with a lot of tenuously-related Tao Te Ching verses), and he writes about things he doesn't seem to actually understand that well. One of his theses is something about chance being a pretty small factor in survival situations, but it's an underdeveloped thesis, and doesn't convince well. Other ideas are similarly unconvincing. He uses sources only tangentially connected to his idea, and repeats himself a lot. This book could have probably been cut down to half (or less) its current size, and organized better. I learned some, but I had to piece it together for myself.
After writing this review, I thought better of it and wanted to change it to two stars, but Amazon won't let me do that in the "Edit Review" thing.
Needs more examples August 1, 2008
Explores engaging concepts of what makes one a survival, although it's questionable as to whether a survivor is born or made. Could do with a little less of the analysis and a few more examples.
 Meandering effort July 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Deep Survival is the kind of book serious editors cringe through.
It's a bizarre, wandering mess. Gonzalez can't just tell a story and stick with the story, then do the play by play and summary.
Every step of the way he interrupts the narrative and tries to offer connections and resemblances. I lost it when he threw in a reference to Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984, declaring Smith lost his will to survive because he failed to maintain his humanity. Or something that banal and totally irrelevant.
I wanted a nuts and bolts survival overview. Gonzales wants to do something far more ambitious, a philosophical overview of the existential art of survival.
But it comes out poorly.
Not worth reading, really.
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