Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
by Laurence Gonzales
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Book Summary Information
Author: Laurence GonzalesBrand: W.w. Norton & Co
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-17
ISBN: 0393326152
Number of pages: 318
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780393326154
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
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.
Summary of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"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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