Customer Reviews

Danger!: True Stories of Trouble and Survival (Travelers' Tales Guides)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Travelers' Tales Danger takes you on a tour of Danger's world. My favorite story in the book is Blademaster. Learn that when faced with a knife wielding attacker that must say to yourself, "today I must bleed a little." Discover the insanity in Rwanda, encounter the hoods of America and the hoodlums of England. I also learned how terrifying it must be to fly in the dark and not know whether you are going up or down. Whether you want to climb perilous crevasses or play with Stinger missles, this book has something for all those looking to safely jack into the violent and dangerous world around them.

The Travelers' Tales franchise faces a challenge that is a result of its own success. They've put out some truly splendid collections of travel literature, creating a resulting demand for more. And it's tough to keep finding great travel pieces up to the standards of the best work they've released.

The pieces in this collection are united by a theme of "danger." If you travel long enough, especially in the developing world, you'll likely ultimately have a few close shaves, experiences that threatened your security and which taught you valuable lessons.

This subject is tailor-made for good reading, the type that gets your blood pressure up, palpably sensing the threat and the fear as you read.

There are several very fine selections in this volume. I particularly liked "Just Desert," wherein the author is lost in the Sinai and finds himself alone in a room with some locals making ominous gestures, far from any aid. "Shaking in the Congo" is also good, a piece in which the author falls ill on the road in the Congo and must lie down unprotected in an out-of-the-way village.

"A Zambian Nightmare" is truly that, in which a young couple is besieged by a gang of thieves in the house they are renting. I also appreciated "Dangerous Liaisons," about a mountain expedition in Pakistan with a nasty, corrupt military officer running the show. "The Season of Fear" captures some of the wild, exotic beauty of the Borneo forest and the people who live within it.

But for every fine piece like these, there is one that doesn't have much to do with travel at all. "The War" is about gang activity in LA. "Flying Blind" is about military flight training sessions in Utah. "Ditching at Sea" is terrifying but is about a helicopter rescue mission going wrong, and is not the sort of story most readers are looking for from Travelers' Tales.

The one piece that really tried my patience was "When it Goes Off," an excerpt from "Among the Thugs." "Among the Thugs" is a book about soccer hooligans, and this isn't the first time I've come upon a similar excerpt from that book in a Travelers' Tales collection. I don't fully understand the fascination that these authors have with soccer riots, but there is no apparent reason to keep recycling these stories in their travel collections.

It's not that these pieces are bad so much as they don't really belong. Presumably the person who picks up a travelers' tales series book is looking for something that captures the adventure of travel in all of its aspects, not just looking for a collection of disparate pieces that interest the compilator.

The best of this and other collections do take you away into that wondrous frame of mind that does the best travel; it's just that this volume doesn't consistently deliver that.

I agree with Munawar Ali above. That being said, people who travel extensively for adventure and then end up almost dying, like most of these folks, are asking for trouble. The gal who traveled over 4 continents on a bicycle and, who would never drive a car due to a childhood traumatic auto accident, had to expect running into a crazy man who beat her up in his apartment when she trusted him and his attempted rape on her. The way she escaped however was very very brave. I personally think in today's world, one has to be crazy to go out traveling all by themselves, running out of money, depending on the goodness of foreigners, etc. Also, my personal opinion only, one is a little off their rocker to try to climb a dangerous mountain where deadly snowstorms come along. It's almost as if they feel they've accomplished something great by suffering to get through their traveling abroad. That aside, the book was a good one. I admit though, I skimmed over the war stories as I am so tired of hearing about war. The story about the hyena attacking its care-taker in my opinion was the best one. For the most part, an excellent read.

I picked this book up after reading RYP's The Worlds Most Dangerous Places. My brother was in Iraq, my best friend in afghanistan, and I had recently returned from Eastern China. I was looking for info on other countries as well as a good read.

This book is filled with stories from different travelers, and all pertain to near death, near rape, or near something else and how they managed to survive. The book is gripping, and as much as I enjoyed and learned from it, I hope never to be able to share a story like any of them.

I recommend this book. It's easy to read and shares lessons learned, and adventures had.

I try to stay away from cheap thrills, and quick fixes. So when I picked this book up, I told myself that I would only read two pages, and if I got bored, it was going back. It took 2 paragraphs and I was hooked.

Each short story is a true account of harrowing danger. The writing is excellent. You don't expect professional adventurers to write well, but they do; And they keep you in it. Each story starts climaxing within 3 pages, so you're on literal adrenalin high almost all the way through the book. I really enjoyed the book and will keep on the lookout for others in the series.

Recommended when you need to kill an hour.

DANGER! (TRAVELERS' TALES): DARING YOU TO READ IT

Reviewed By John M. Edwards

When I first bought a copy of "Not So Funny When It Happened" published by Travelers' Tales books, I was mighty glad I had in the past made it into the revolutionary magazine Escape several times. I would have liked to have had my name appear with the blurb advertising another book called "Danger!"--all about extreme misadventuring abroad.

Here is my blurb: "The next time you plan to be kidnapped in the Congo, climb Mount Communism or catch malaria in the Congo, Danger! is the book to take along for light reading. Your own suffering will pale in comparison."

John M. Edwards, 2011