Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

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.
 

Customer Reviews:

Lessons for Management

While writing a human resources / management book, I realized that many of my references did not come from the world of business but rather from diverse subject matters. Nothing in my large stack of reference material was more useful than Laurence Gonzales's book on survival.

I greatly appreciated the writing style and the pace had me finishing the book in two settings. More importantly, I was so very glad to find that the lessons in this `survival' book could be readily applied to the business arena.

The lessons in this book: be calm, be decisive and never give up, were massaged and incorporated in my work. Together with surveys provided by our military leadership in Iraq, I was able to develop a guide for management in not only how to survive but thrive in a hostile environment.

I highly recommend this book to business leaders that truly want the best for their organizations and themselves. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author ofWingtips with Spurs

2008-08-23

Deep Survival

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".

2008-08-19

Awesome. The Entertaining Psychology of Survivors

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.

2008-08-12

Could have been much better

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.

2008-08-04

Needs more examples

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.

2008-08-01