Editorial Reviews:
"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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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:  
Summary: Deep Survival
Comment: I read this book (age 57) when my daughter(age 20) was training to climb Aconcagua and I was petrified. She is a good athlete but had never climbed mountains. A friend recommended it to me. As much as I love the rest of the book, what was most poignant to me was the part about how survivors have a plan and then are able to take in new data and adjust their plan. It brought me to a peace--she had been a soccer and LAX goalie for many years and she took in new data daily. She ended up not summitting but that was because she took in new data. She and her guide were being pelleted by ice and they had about 13 more hours to the summit. They turned back.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rollercoaster Ride
Comment: The author presents science and psychology of survival in a way that is way more than science or pysch. Every story of survival (and there are a ton of them) is inspirational and awe inspiring. I love how each story melts into the overall plot, to form a coherent story from the first page to the last.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a remarkable journey through survival
Comment: I've given copies of Deep Survival to five friends from very diverse backgrounds. Each one has thanked me. The book isn't a linear, Cartesian analysis about how a person enters a zone of great risk at point A and, after following a prescription of do's and don'ts, exits alive or dead at point Z. The author knows it isn't that simple. Each story becomes its own survival sermon, a grim eulogy for those who die and a paean to grace and luck for those who live. Each time I revisit Deep Survival, I find something valuable. I have added it to the very short list of books that I reread every three or four years.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Boys quest for Daddy's approval
Comment: I thought I was going to like this book. I didn't. I ended up annoyed that I wasted my time reading a self indulgent homage to the Authors Father with things like "The Rules of Life" (written by his 6 year old daughter) presented as things I should take seriously.
Before purchasing this book try to imagine how this passage is pertinent to the subject of survival:
... my father climbed out and said "you're a really good pilot" ... It was one of the most important moments in my life.
Worse, since Dad is a scientist, the Author takes nearly every survival situation presented and inserts scientific brain studies, chaos theory and many other complexities to them. In the end he ends up destroying good survival stories and I'm sure serious scientists would say he short changes the science too.
By the time he gets to the story of how he passed up a plane trip that ended up killing his co-workers (His survival intuition at work) I was rolling my eyes.
A main point is to "trust your gut". I am. This book is just a boy looking for Daddy's approval. That's what my gut tells me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An ABSOLUTE MUST READ for tackling adversity
Comment: This book is mandatory reading for anyone faced with extreme adversity. It very effectively sets forth a layperson's blueprint for the survivor mentality - affording you a no-risk peek into the edges of survival without having to float at sea for seventy-one days to understand what is "normal" under those circumstances. "Deep Survival" is a brilliant look into understanding your mind and learning how to adapt: finding sanity and survival in situations where "herd" thinking would lead you to believe you are afforded none. I am not into the deep sciences, but I was riveted to his presentation of matters that in other contexts would probably lose my attention. Gonzales is a gifted, entertainingly punky, writer who's on top of his topic. One takes away his meticulous, first-hand research into these disasters and appreciates his some twenty years of study in this area. "Deep Survival" is definitely a psychological book illustrated with adventure stories, rather than the converse. Some readers are either not ready for the book's message or are presented with an unexpected text and turn off. If you are just looking for an adventure book, you would do well to read some of the books citied in here first: "Adrift," "Into Thin Air" or "Red Sky in the Mourning" (sic).
Whether you are tackling overwhelming financial times or you break your leg on a mountain at 12,000 feet, you will exponentially increase your ability to cope with those situations for having understood this book. Unfortunately, it benefits the average person's comprehension to have gone through great adversity, or to be going through it, to fully appreciate the levels that this book works on. I have given this to military commanders, psychologists, fellow outdoor adventurers and friends going through divorce. I get one solid response: An exceptional work.
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