Product Description
Reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster finds himself adopting various stray dogs, from a beagle abandoned in a dog run to a pit bull at a truck stop. The dogs offer a grounding counterpoint to his own misfortunes in New York City after 9/11, in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and during his heart attack.
Customer Reviews:
The dogs who found him... that "who" just gives him away........2007-09-21
The grammar error in the title shows me that this book is written by a true dog lover. A charming collection of writings, it shows a man making a life for abandoned animals in the face of catastrophe, health trouble and money worries. He really does concentrate on the dogs... what they do, where they go, what they like, what they need. Most of all, this is a book about who they love. The author is overwhelmed at times, though he knows he's chosen (or been chosen by) his own troubles. I have misgivings about pit bulls as a breed, and it's clear that Foster is completely aware of the dangers himself, but what a lovely dog family he's assembled. Highly recommended, but only for those of us who see animals for the fascinating, complicated characters they can be.
The Dogs Who Found Me.......2007-09-04
All three of our pets found themselves in the frightening position of having been left behind (One in AZ, one in MA and the third in NH). How they found their way into our hearts and home is miraculous! Consequently, we have a very real fondness for the topic of this book. It's an excellent story and was packaged to arrive in excellent condition!The Dogs Who Found Me: What I've Learned from Pets Who Were Left Behind
Easy Read.......2007-08-10
I found the author to be a hypocrite on a few issue surrounding pet onwership and rescue. He voiced his opinion strongly about people who are unable to meet the expenses of pet ownership, yet he had a sponsor pay all vet bills for heartworm and various other health issues, as well as covering other expenses for an injured sick dog he couldn't bear to live without. He would have found himself in the exact same position as some of the 'unfit' petowners he described if he didn't have the animal contacts.
The author didn't talk much about how his obession with rescuing dogs fit into his social life. While social situations were in fact discussed,I never felt I had a good understanding of how this man managed a full time job, numerous animals (some with health and emotional issues)and a social life outside of his few friends who also spent their time picking up strays.
The book is not one which has remained in my home. After I finished it I took it to my vets office while picking up one of my dogs who had just been neutered at my own expense~no sponsorship here!
Anything for the dogs.......2007-07-07
I got this book last weekend and read it in a day. It's a very good and easy read, that will make you smile and tear up along the way.
I've been pretty dog-obsessed lately and i was almost sad when i finished it, i wanted to read more.
The world, and dogs, need more Ken Foster.
dog lover.......2007-05-13
I love dogs and have 2 spoiled ones. I always wish I could afford more and be able to help many others. I have taken a couple in and helped to find homes for them, but Ken Foster has done so much more. It would be a better world to live in if we could be this kind to all animals in this world.
Book Description
Eric Hobsbawm has been widely acclaimed as one of the greatest living historians. Called "a lyrical, pungent, and provocative memoir" by Publishers Weekly, Interesting Times offers a personal tour through what Hobsbawm terms "the most extraordinary and terrible century in human history." The book takes us from his birth in Alexandria, Egypt, and early schooling in Weimar Berlin to his student days as a Cambridge Red and Apostle at King's College. Hobsbawm took E.M. Forster to hear Lenny Bruce, demonstrated with Bertrand Russell against nuclear arms, translated for Che Guevara in Havana, and inaugurated the modern history of banditry. With Interesting Times, we see the making of one of the Left's most important intellectuals, and the history of the twentieth century through the unforgiving eye of one of its most intensely engaged participants.
Customer Reviews:
Great autobiography of Hobsbawm.......2007-02-27
This book is a very good autobiography. Let first me state that I don't share a lot of Hobsbawm's politics (he was a member of Britain's Communist party for more than half a century). Yet I have always found him a very engaging writer. Maybe because of his age - he was born in 1917 - he is immune to the neomarxist, postmodern cant that have afflicted much of leftist writers since the 1960s. His writing style is instead simple and to the point. He tells the story of his life - the story of his parents, his accidental birth in Egypt, growing up in Vienna as a jew, the sudden death of his father and mother in a short time during his teenage years, his life as a young man in Berlin in the early 30s, his coming to England, his years in Cambridge, joining England's Communist Party, his rejection of Zionism, his life (wasted, according to him) during World War II, a visit to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, his position after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, his later visits to Latin America - in a candid, simple and matter of fact, way. A very engaging book even if you disagree with his politics.
An Interesting Life.......2004-10-31
Hobsbawm's book is called Interesting Times rather than An Interesting Life, but that is just Hobsbawm being modest. After a lifetime of analyzing history from the perspective of a leftist, but generally even-handed, professor, he takes an opportunity to get a few things off his chest.
He tackles the question of why he stayed a communist for so long, even after the Stalin years forced so many believers to reevaluate their views. He discusses America frankly, past (loves New York, hates the suburbs near Stanford University) and present (the reaction to September 11). He reminisces about wars, academia, and jazz.
About the only question he doesn't address is when and why he changed the spelling of his last name. Unimportant perhaps, but curious. A readable, entertaining, and thoughtful memoir of an interesting man in a troubled century.
A donnish interpreter for the working class.......2004-09-13
After a slow 150 pages in which Hobsbaum tells of his birth in 1917 in Alexandria to a Jewish father, son of an émigré cabinet-maker, and a Viennese jeweller's daughter followed by his youth in Austria and then Weimar Berlin and his stint at Cambridge, his story gains energy, if intermittently. Certainly Hobsbaum has led, after a rather tenuous period of living hand-to-mouth via the courtesy of relations and friends, a life more comfortable than that gained by many, communist or capitalist. His adherence to the Communist Party for so much of his life, from his profession in 1932 in Germany to his joining in 1936 and his allegiance throughout Stalinism and after the Hungarian revolt of 1956 motivates his four-hundred page apologia. Balancing his ideological commitment to a concomitant refusal to accept dogma results in a curious tension. How can a securely employed, well-travelled, multi-lingual, and nimbly minded individual stay loyal to a cause that rallied the poor and the intellectual while committing so many murders in its name?
Hobsbaum argues well his reasoning. Surprisingly, little of his book recapitulates his scholarly mission, the fame of which derives first from his popularising of the earlier century's "primitive rebels," those who resisted capitalisation and globalisation and their own redundancy. Far too many pages provide lists of luncheons, flights, and friends. Hobsbaum warns the reader that little of his private life will emerge here, and his sons gain only a couple of sentences here and there, for example; their half-brother, apparently the result of an affair in-between his two marriages, is mentioned in half-a-sentence. Instead, as the blurb and the cover images trumpet, Hitler, Che, and the Soviet Man of Steel gain attention, and even more the milieu in which he and his internationalists roamed in between seminars and scholarship-again, little of the classroom to be found here. Hobsbaum actually gives little insight into the Great Men, but much on his mates.
Idiosyncratically, the book's form skips about. Most of it tracks his own career, while latter chapters sum up his thoughts and chats in France, Italy, Spain, the Third World, and the U.S. One chapter, fascinating to me for its oblique mirroring of recent Ireland, takes on the land of his holiday home in Wales near the eccentric Clough Williams-Ellis, builder of among other wonders, the seaside resort of Portmeirion, later the site of the 1960s television series The Prisoner. In this chapter, the author carefully analyses the resurgence of Welsh separatism in that decade, to the point that it drove him to a safer and more anglicised portion of the principality in which to vacation. Hobsbaum dismisses "ethnolinguistic nationalism" and has little time for the 1960s legacy of individualism that led to the promotion of non-conformity at the expense of the social ideal for which earlier revolutionaries had struggled.
Hobsbaum pinpoints the crucial difference between himself and later radicals. He is one of the last living intellectuals inspired to hoist the Red flag by the events in the year of his birth. A teenager when he cast his lot with the German communists just before Hitler's consolidation of power, Hobsbaum defends his faith in Marx. While later converts recanted once the allure of the anti-fascist crusade dimmed, Hobsbaum emphasises that he remained a believer after Khrushchev's decision to undermine the monolithic power of the CPSU in 1956-the second time that "ten days shook the world." "To put it in the simplest terms," he summarises, "the October Revolution created a world communist movement, the Twentieth Congress destroyed it." (201) Because Hobsbaum and his CP allies had been lied to, "something that had to affect the very nature of a communist's belief," the concealment of the truth about Stalin led to the instability of an presumed solid façade of political and cultural endurance, and foreshadowed the fall of the Wall.
Which perhaps was a Potemkin village, but one where, Hobsbaum claims, protection against the harsh blows of capitalism and unrestrained greed did enable Soviets and those under their subjection to pursue a laudable goal of communist equality and worldwide fraternity. Hobsbaum cautiously tiptoes around the conflict of the dream with the reality.
He acknowledges that communists like himself and their western parties never had to govern from a position of actual power, and therefore mitigates the decisions made by those who did rule in the name of the working class. No creed since Islam in the seventh century, he reminds us, spread so rapidly and so far across our planet.
Speaking of this takeover, Hobsbaum elides complications. He compares the removal of communist ministers in western governments circa 1947 with their inclusion in non-communist administrations "in the countries under communist rule." (180) He laments the establishment of the Orwellian-monikered Cominform before continuing: `The Eastern regimes, deliberately not set up as communist, but as pluriparty "new" or "peoples' democracies" with mixed economies, were now assimilated to the "dictatorship of the proleteriat", i.e. the standard Communist Party dictatorships.' The author seems to skip over how a country can be "under communist rule" with a mixed economy and a pluriparty regime for long, before being standardised as a CP one-party dictatorship, given the logic of communist consolidation of power within a single party model. And, from my admittedly non-specialist understanding of those nations soon to be mortared into the façade of the Eastern bloc, such a pluriparty system was never seriously intended to survive, given the 1943 Tehran conference and the Cold War's surrender to the USSR of those Central and Eastern European nations as a buffer zone to defend Stalin's empire.
Hobsbaum confused me with a statement about one of those buffer nations with which I have some familiarity, Hungary. Discussing an intellectual who claimed to be a victim of Soviet repression post-1956 who in fact was a Party organiser after the revolt, the author states: `Unfortunately in the course of those years, under the benevolent eye of the Kadar government, the sympathizers with the 1956 movement, that is to say the bulk of the communist intellectuals and the academics, quietly re-established their positions.' (145)
Those less informed about Hungary at this time might misconstrue this passage, intended to contrast the fake refugee from the revolt with his comrades who remained, as praising the regime of Kadar, who pretended to side with the rebels only to turncoat to the Soviet invaders as they returned to crush the revolt, and to imply that the majority of those who were sympathisers with the rebellion suffered no harm under the Kadar regime. Although a communist revolt, the Hungarians sought neutrality apart from the Warsaw Pact and a mixed economy. These aims, Hobsbaum agrees, could not have been tolerated under Soviet domination, but he diminishes the struggle of those who sought a more human face for socialism by too often defending the Russian bear's slashes across the face of those who defied its imperial might, feigned as a blow for people's equality.
Throughout his book, Hobsbaum distances himself from Judaism and Zionism, in the name of a greater identity with the oppressed everywhere. Yet his early identification with the position of the outsider, the alien, and the non-conformist (witness too his long championship in scholarship and avocation of an appreciation for jazz) could only have been gained by his Judaic stance, secular as it was, and his similar oppositional decision to embrace communism at fourteen. I find his lack of sympathy for Israel predictable therefore, but still would like to know what alternatives could have existed for his relatives who did not survive the camps, or those who did survive in a hostile Europe.
His detachment from issues like these when they effect the individual may be attributed to his rather distanced position as that outsider, whether in Wales, in London, in Berlin, or in Alexandria (although his lectureships at the New School in New York City, at Stanford and the Getty Center, or his frequent global trips in search of like-minded companions sounded quite enjoyable to me). He claims that after his forties, whatever happened of note in his life was inside his head, and these transatlantic odysseys merely widened his intellectual horizons. Or maybe not, as he remained loyal to the Cause throughout the Cold War, despite New Labour, and now in spite of Bush. His chapters on the rest of the world outside the dons' room and the overseas seminar open up many intriguing insights, but I never felt that Hobsbaum was quite on the same level as us proles.
A sample, taken from a discussion of the Party's `cultural group' protesting in 1956: `The Indo-Scandinavian intellectual Palme Dutt, one of those implausibly tall upper-class figures one occasionally meets among Bengalis, belonged through his mother to an eminent Swedish kindred-Olaf Palme, the socialist premier assassinated in 1986, was another member.' (208-9) This, like his analogy of labeled decanters in "the combination room" at Cambridge to keep dons from confusing their port and their sherry, speak of a privileged world in which Hobsbaum has earned his eminence, and one where, his communism to the contrary, he continues to thrive. It is natural for any of us to write from the position we know, so I don't mean to criticise the laurels which Hobsbaum has earned, but I do wish to point out that, as he confesses, `somewhere inside of me there is a small ghost who whispers: "One should not be at ease in a world such as ours." As the man said when I read him in my youth: "The point is to change it."' (313). However, he interprets the world marvelously--if evasively.
[Review edited from an on-line essay for the Belfast-based journal The Blanket.]
a sad tale.......2004-08-09
Much as I admire Hobsbawm's histories of Europe and "invention of tradition", I felt, when reading this account of a long life, as if the author is evading his own personality, his own roots, seeking refuge in apostolic and childish occupations without having a real sense of humour, and setting to write his own history and diaries without a keen talent to face and practice life and times as it realy faced him in a sensitive, humam attitude: The Holocaust, of which he hardly makes a note, and with it Jewish collective fate, both in Nazi Germany and in his beloved Soviet Russia. Moreover(on page 295 in the Abacus paperback edition), he makes a rather stupid, or perhaps malicious comparison between Stalinist Russia, Vichi France and the State of Israel. He does mention the great Israeli Historian, Prof. Jacob Talmon, as the only person giving him a helping hand in hard times, but has other than that only bad language and simple, narrow thoughts about the only place on earth which has opened welcoming doors to ANY Jew escaping Nazi Europe, not only to a lucky, selected few which had landed elsewhere.
Similar opinions are widespread in Europe today (and in academic circles in Israel too). I for one welcome any debate on Israeli policies. But In Hobsbawm's book there isn't any. Only harsh, cold, unjust remarks, which stand in harsh dissonance to his kind description of almost anything and anyone associated with left-wing English Sports or British Jazz. Pity how Brecht's poem which he likes so much ("An die Nachgeborenen")could apply to this "unfriendly" autobiography of a great historian and scholar.
Interesting but humourless.......2004-03-26
Eric Hobsbawn has led a fascinating life and has added enormously to the understanding of the last two centuries withhis brilliant historical mind.
I enjoyed reading his autobiography, but I found it to be almost humourless and astonishingly free of anecdote. He comes across as an earnest devotee of communism. His wrestling with the failure of communism - both morally and materially - is one of the most engaging features of the book. But I wanted to know the person and person does not seem to appear at all. In truth, it is an extended essay on his life and times, but very little else.
Book Description
What could possibly impel a relatively privileged twenty-four-year-old American—serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1952—to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the still young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman, who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR.
A child of the Depression, Grossman witnessed firsthand the dislocations wrought by the collapse of the U.S. economy during the 1930s. Widespread unemployment and poverty, CIO sit-down strikes, and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism—all made an indelible impression as he grew up in an environment that nurtured a commitment to left-wing causes. He continued his involvement with communist activities as a student at Harvard in the late 1940s and after graduation, when he took jobs in two factories in Buffalo, New York, and tried to organize their workers.
Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman worked in the GDR with other Western defectors and eventually became, as he notes, the "only person in the world to attend Harvard and Karl Marx universities." Later, he was able to establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer, and author. Traveling throughout East Germany, he evaluated the failures as well as the successes of the GDR's "socialist experiment." He also recorded his experiences, observations, and judgments of life in East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the post-Communist paradise so many had expected.
Written with humor as well as candor, "Crossing the River" provides a rare look at the Cold War from the other side of the ideological divide.
Mark Solomon, a distinguished historian of the American left, provides a historical afterword that places Grossman's experiences in a larger Cold War context.
Customer Reviews:
A Unique Account of an Escape To The GDR.......2005-03-06
Between the end of World War II and the erection of the Berlin Wall, millions of eastern Germans escaped to what was, or would become, West Germany. There was a lot less traffic in the other direction. This is the story of one man who fled the West and wound up "behind the Iron Curtain" in East Germany. American-born Victor Grossman (né Stephen Wechsler) was literally a card-carrying Communist until he was drafted into the US Army -- a fact he did not disclose on a form asking whether he had ever belonged to any subversive organizations. In 1952, as an American soldier stationed in West Germany, Grossman received a letter requiring him to answer charges that he had lied under oath. Instead, Grossman went to then-occupied Austria and swam across the Danube into the Soviet zone. After being detained by Soviet intelligence, Grossman was given a new life and identity in the "German Democratic Republic."
Grossman was, is and remains a true believer in Communism. Grossman tells us that he got a thrill when he saw his first Soviet soldier, with the red star on his hat. Grossman justifies the building of the Berlin Wall and minimizes the wrongs of the Stasi, who except for dissidents were "unpleasant but less frightening than now portrayed." The book is written from a Communist perspective, which again and again minimizes the wrongs of the GDR and magnifies the wrongs of the United States. Yet, Grossman's argument that German communism did not necessarily preclude democracy collapses upon closer examination. A big problem for the GDR is that it had to live cheek by jowl with a free-market economy. If, as Grossman claims, the Berlin Wall was necessary to prevent GDR-educated professionals from fleeing and GDR-subsidized goods from being sold in West Germany at higher prices, then the GDR would have to remain a closed state to function. And that meant that GDR residents would not have the ultimate freedom to "vote with their feet" and leave. Grossman voluntarily chose to live under communism -- other East Germans did not have that choice. Their "revolution," such as it was, was imposed by the Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, even someone like me, whose political views are 180 degrees opposite from Grossman's, found the book engaging. One reason is that Grossman's story is so unusual. Very few American servicemen fled to East Germany and fewer probably met or interacted with as wide a range of people, including foreign celebrities like Jane Fonda. Additionally, there are very few memoirs written by Communists who came of age in the 1940s: most are written by those from the "popular front" era of the 1930s or the New Left of the 1960s. This book takes the reader to factory life in Buffalo, concerts by Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, and all over the GDR. And the book is well-written: Grossman makes the most persuasive case possible for the benefits of his adopted country.
My personal opinion is this: As an American, I'm frankly glad that Victor Grossman left the country. Anyone who dislikes the American system as much as he does, and goes AWOL from the US Army to East Germany at the height of the Cold War, should live elsewhere. As a reader, however, I'm glad to have been able to read his book. While the author's views are (in my opinion) wrongheaded, the book never fails to be fascinating.
An excellent and objective read.......2003-12-11
This is an excellent and unique work. It will not bore you in the least bit. Grossman presents a very human and objective picture of life in the first German socialist state. This is a very informative and interesting account and should be read not only by those interested in the GDR, but also by those interested in history in general, and those who enjoy a fascinating story. This work paints a very different picture of the GDR than the usual Western "totalitarian nightmare" type books. Highly reccomended.
Fills a historical void.......2003-08-31
This engrossing autobiography relates, first hand, what happened post WWII with the diehard leftists in the eastern blocs when their dreams of socialism came crushing down around them .
The author fled his native USA while in the army and swam the Danube to seek a better world.
An honest insight that has not previously been told.
Average customer rating:
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Memoirs from the Left
John Saville
Manufacturer: Merlin Press
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ASIN: 0850365201 |
Book Description
Chronicling the life of a prolific writer and influential thinker in the 20th century, the political memoirs of John Saville trace his early encounters with the Communist Party and his service in World War II in India as an anti-aircraft gunner to his involvement in the crisis of the British Communist Party in 1956. Saville's personal history is studded with such distinctive figures as John Griffith, Stuart Hall, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Ralph Miliband, Sir John Pratt, Raphael Samuel, and E. P. Thompson.
Average customer rating:
- A surprise find - definitely worth while reading
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I Am the Voice Left from Drinking: The Models from the 'Burbs to 'Barbados' and Beyond
James Freud
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Australia
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0732274400 |
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The no-holds-barred, brutally honest journey of a musician who made it from the suburbs to the top of the charts: graced the covers of every music magazine, toured the U.K. and U.S., lived the rock-n-roll dream and is still alive (barely) to talk about it. This is a who's who of the entertainment industry as James Freud got up close and personal with everyone from Kylie Minogue to Andy Warhol and Lady Di.
Customer Reviews:
A surprise find - definitely worth while reading.......2007-02-02
This was a random pick for me. I wasn't sure what to expect but was surprised at how much I liked this book. Enough to write a review which I never ever do.
One of the initial quotes is "I hate the music industry" and it's easy to see why after reading this. The story starts off with James explaining how years of excess finally caught up with him and left him in a critical condition in hospital fighting for his life. Then the story of how he arrived in this hell unfolds.
Even if you didn't grow up in Australia in the 80s during The Models glorious years or have never heard of this band I think this is still an entertain read of the rock n' roll lifestyle told in a painfully honest and funny way. The story of an individual in a band trying to be the next big thing, make money and deal with addiction to alcohol. It doesn't glamorize the lifestyle, it's brutally honest. In fact it's a great warning for any band member contemplating entering this world. This successful band was left with nothing but debts at the end. The music business can be brutal.
I rarely rate a book of rock n roll excess worth reading but this one is well written and entertaining read. I'd make it mandatory reading for all band members.
Amazon.com
In
Casting Her Own Shadow, historian Allida Black chronicles Eleanor Roosevelt's considerable---if often unacknowledged---influence on liberal politics. Throughout her adult life, Roosevelt campaigned for civil rights and women's issues, conducting a vigorous campaign of editorials in publications like Redbook and The New York Times to advance the causes she espoused. She enjoyed a huge following, Black notes, not least because her writing was commonsensical and good-humored, even when Roosevelt was clearly irritated. "I am beginning to think," she once observed, for instance, "that if you have been a liberal, and if you believe that those who are strong must sometimes consider the weak, and that with strength and power goes responsibility, automatically some people will consider you a Communist." Better known than her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he entered national politics, Eleanor managed to keep her own identity even as his advisors urged her to keep a lower profile and stay out of the news. What bearing does all this have on the present? Well, this is a matter being played out even now in Washington, for no one quite resembles Roosevelt so much as Hillary Clinton, whose work as a politician and newspaper columnist echoes Roosevelt's---and who has been similarly reviled for expressing independent ideas.
Book Description
Black shows how Eleanor Roosevelt, after being freed from the constraints imposed by her role in the White House, eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly challenged both the Democratic party and American liberals to practice what they preach.
Customer Reviews:
Out of the Shadow--Into the Sun.......2000-05-08
Negotiating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the United Nations was not the only post-FDR contribution of Eleanor Roosevelt. This extraordinary woman was a powerful force within the Democratic Party and America until the day she died and left a legacy in her own right on issues of civil rights and civil liberties that finds voice even today.
Black's book focuses on Roosevelt's post-White House years and brings ER's domestic front activities and contributions to light--showing the long-term and deep nature of Eleanor Roosevelt's convictions. The book traces ER's growth in understanding of issues and underscores the courage it took to live her life in the forefront of debate and controversy.
This book should be read by anyone interested in Eleanor Roosevelt for the insight it brings and the truly interesting stories it tells. I particularly found the chapter on ER's relationship with John F. Kennedy fascinating and learned that ER withheld her support for his candidacy until he promised her action on civil rights. Ever the consumate tactition, she even rearranged the chairs at the famous meeting between them at Val Kil so she would be sitting higher than him.
"Casting" is pain-stakingly researched and well documented. Allida Black's interpretation of ER is founded on years of work with Roosevelt's papers and other sources.
Product Description
Printed in the late 19th century, by Lee & Shepherd, this edition has no date but is circa 1880. Hardcover has elaborate black stamped designs on cover and spine, along with decorative lettering in silver. Front has a silver portrait of Shakespeare. Title page has alternate spelling "Shakspeare" in title. Includes eight black & white illustrations taken from paintings and a frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare.
Average customer rating:
- Beck Weathers book
- Realizing the times you didn't even know you were numb
- For me, it helped me with my challenge
- If you're wondering what happened to Beck Weathers...
- Glad I read it -
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Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
Dr. Seaborn Beck Weathers , and
Stephen G. Michaud
Manufacturer: Brilliance Audio on MP3-CD Lib Ed
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Similar Items:
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The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest
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High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places
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Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
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Everest
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Everest (Large Format)
ASIN: 1596006080
Release Date: 2005-04-25 |
Amazon.com
Left for Dead is a deeply personal story, told in first person by a variety of people who contributed to the survival of Beck Weathers during the Everest accident of 1996 that left nine climbers dead. It goes past the tragedy to discuss why Weathers got involved in climbing in the first place, his lengthy and painful recovery, and the all-important relationship with his wife, Margaret (commonly referred to as Peach). Without Peach's hope and tenacity, it's likely that rescue efforts would not have been continued, and Weathers may never have recovered from the hypothermic coma and its dreadful results. The story of their relationship--they were estranged at the time of the accident--is told from both perspectives, and his obsession with mountains seems almost like another family member. The overall tone is straightforward and conversational: children, pets, and clothing feature as prominently as reconstructive surgery and heroic rescues. But no matter how plainly they are told, the events of that climb are sure to bring tears. Rob Hall's last conversation with his wife, climbers disappearing into the storm, Anatoli Boukreev's rescuing three people, and Weathers and climbing partner Yasuko being left for dead are just a few from a long list. Still, you'll find yourself laughing just pages later, when Weathers gets his rescue team to sing "Chain of Fools" while hiking back to safety--you can imagine Peach being in full agreement of that song's appropriateness. The Everest deaths affected people around the world, and this chronicle of one survivor and his family is a hopeful reminder of the good that can result from such tragedies. --Jill Lightner
Book Description
On May 10, 1996, nine climbers perished in a blizzard high on Mount Everest, the single deadliest day ever on the peak. The following day, one of these victims was given a second chance. His name is Beck Weathers.
The tale of Dr. Weathers's miraculous awakening from a deep hypothermic coma was widely reported. But the hidden story of what led the pathologist to Everest in the first place, and his painful recovery after his dramatic rescue, has not been told until now.
Brilliant and gregarious, Weathers discovered in his thirties that mountain climbing helped him cope with the black dog of depression. But his self-prescribed therapy came at a steep cost: estrangement from his wife, Peach, and their two children. By the time he left for Everest, his home life had all but disintegrated.
Yet when he was reported dead after lying exposed on the mountain for eighteen hours in subzero weather, it was Peach who orchestrated the daring rescue that brought her husband home. Only then, facing months of surgery and the loss of his hands, did Beck Weathers also begin to face himself, his family, his past, and his uncertain future.
Candid and uncompromising, Left for Dead is a deeply compelling saga of crisis and change, and of the abiding power of love and family.
Download Description
On May 10, 1996, nine climbers perished in the "death zone" on Mount Everest. The following day, one was given a second chance at life. His name was Beck Weathers. The tale of Weathers' miraculous awakening from a deep hypothermic coma was widely reported. Yet the hidden story of what led the pathologist to Everest in the first place, and his painful recovery after his dramatic rescue, has not been told until now.
Customer Reviews:
Beck Weathers book.......2007-07-19
The book is OK.I like to know all the book about 1996 Everest disaster.The middle part of book - about Beck life history - was boring.The climbing parts were OK.In my opinion the best book was "The Climb"
Realizing the times you didn't even know you were numb.......2007-03-03
If you, like me, are an avid armchair mountaineer, gripping your cup of hot chocolate at the risk of either spilling your drink or breaking the cup as the National Geographic Channel or Discovery Times takes you over the breathtaking vistas of the Seven Summits; and if you, like me, stop to read or listen to every story of the mighty Everest and the hundreds of people who've braved its summit since Tenzing Norgary Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hilary cut the ribbon, you're bound to be drawn to this book. And certainly if you, like me, know by name everyone on Rob Hall's and Scott Fischer's teams in 1996...those who perished, and those who survived, along with a preview of the breathtaking tale Beck Weathers tells here of his rescue from the mountain, you may scratch your head in puzzlement when you realize that you are less than a third into "Left for Dead" when you've reached this point in the book. What more could there be to tell?
Don't stop reading.
First of all, Beck does a spectacular job, aided by his wife, now, who adds comments about how his obsession with climbing afffected the family, of his entire history of climbing, including the colorful characters and the close calls that accompany Beck and his companions during their climb. But now as he looks back, Beck is able to reflect on what he missed.
Oh no. Is this turning into a screenplay for a chick flick? Well, not really. Or not entirely. But by the end, Beck has realized all that he came very close to losing ....even after the Everest climb...included much more than a hand, and was much more precious.
Although I still would have liked a bit more build-up before the crisis on Everest, I thought this was a darned good book. I would not ask the author to lose any more extremities, but if he could manage to write another without losing one, that would be OK.
For me, it helped me with my challenge.......2007-02-01
7 years ago , I was diagnosed with non hodgkins lymphoma, and not curable, I read this book 5 years ago in the peak of my mental struggle, it was a turning point for me, I empathized with Beck, am I going to die?, or walk down that Mountain, even when he walked into the camp he was written off, only he knew he would survive, after reading this book my fear went away of my own mortality. That is what this book did for me, I am happy to report I remain in remmission.
If you're wondering what happened to Beck Weathers..........2007-01-10
If you're wondering what happened to Beck Weathers after he was rescued from Everest in 1996... keep wondering. This inappropriately titled book focuses on the climb itself and Beck's life story, with almost no details on how Beck managed to surmount the terrible injuries he suffered while climbing Everest. Details of the climb itself occupy about 1/3rd of the book; 109 of it's 335 pages. It's the same story you've already read in "Into Thin Air", "The Climb", "High Exposure", and numerous magazine articles. Beck's telling is more informal and provides less detail than those other sources. Interspersed with Beck's narrative are occasional quotes from his wife, family, friends, or other participants in the climb(e.g. Charlotte Fox and Madan K.C.). Ultimately, this portion of the book proves unsatisfying if you're read any other material concerning the 1996 climbing season on Everest. The remainder of the book covers Beck's life story: his family life, difficulties with depression, family and marriage problems, and previous climbs. Those who bought "Left for Dead" with an interest in mountain climbing will be disappointed with the rather short descriptions of Beck's previous climbs. The final chapter, say 40 pages, describes the surgeries and rehabilitation needed to recover from the injuries suffered on Everest, along with family life at the time, and the death of his wife's brother. Again, the chapter moves along quickly without much detail. While this book is somewhat entertaining, it reads like a transcription of several hours of telephone interviews with all the limitations that implies; one wonders if co-author Stephen Michaud was simply the typist who transcribed these conversations. In the end, while you may have learned a bit more about Beck Weathers and what he went through on and after Everest, he still remains largely an enigma.
Glad I read it -.......2006-12-26
"I searched all over the world for that which would fulfill me, and all along it was in my own backyard." That's how Beck Weathers sums up what his harrowing Everest adventure taught him.
If you're looking for suspense, look elsewhere. The facts of the 1996 climbing season on Mount Everest are well known, and Dr. Weathers (a Texas pathologist) tells his own climb's story in his book's first section. This is one man's personal memoir, not a mountaineering book, and I knew that when I bought it. His reasons for wanting to summit Everest were entirely unlike pioneer climber George Mallory's famous, "Because it is there." For Dr. Weathers this was one more way to insulate himself from the growing pain of living.
What could make such an outwardly successful human being feel that way about his life? Beck Weathers had it all, and not just the material things that a partner in a thriving medical practice can afford for himself and for his family. He also had a loving wife, two healthy and gifted children, a host of friends, and a supportive extended family. Yet this brilliant and charismatic man could not bring himself to believe that these people really did love him, and wanted his company. Nor could he allow himself to enjoy theirs, because in his mind he did not deserve happiness. He deserved, instead, the kind of punishment that extreme sports inflict.
The enormous gap between Beck's world as he perceived it through the filter of chronic depression, and Beck's world as it really was, closed when he to all intents and purposes froze to death on Mount Everest. Opening his eyes after hours of lying out in a blizzard, left for dead not once but twice by comrades unable to carry him to safety, was his first miracle. Getting off the mountain alive was his second, after the Base Camp doctors responded to news of his revival by telling those trying to care for him after he stumbled into camp horribly frostbitten: "He is going to die. Do not bring him down." The third miracle, though, is the greatest one. Beck Weathers held onto his near-death epiphany. He believed the truths he'd finally glimpsed, and used that knowledge to transform his life.
Slow reading at times, as we follow Beck's early life and go with him through young manhood? Maybe. But everything he says in those chapters is necessary to the story, and his flashes of wry and biting humor had this particular reader howling at times. He spares himself nothing, and allows others who know him - wife "Peach" mostly, but also his children, brothers, and associates - to add their viewpoints even when they honestly disagree with his own.
No, this isn't a book about mountaineering. It's about redemption, and how high a price one man paid to find the happiness that should have been his all along. I am very glad I read it.
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