Customer Reviews

Great Escapes: The Stories Behind 50 Remarkable Journeys to Freedom

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Bravo to Scott Christianson for writing a book that is engaging, educational and interesting. Great escapes brings together the usual stories of Papilion, Willie Sutton and "The Great Escape" of WWII fame, he also brings in more recent cases from Yemen, Colombia and 9/11. The stories are written in a gripping fashion and even when I knew the story in advance, I found it very enjoyable to read again thanks to great writing and a well done format.

This is a very entertaining book and highly enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a better than fiction story.

What do Ernest Shackleton, Willie Sutton, Aron Ralston and Scott O'Grady have in common? Answer: they were all determined individuals who managed to break free from imminent death or imprisonment. In this 2009 Firefly Books release, Scott Christianson chronicles the details of those four escapees and forty other men and women who triumphed over adversity.

Christianson divides the escapee tales into chapters on Nature, Kidnappers, Regimes, Prison and the Law, Man-made Disasters, World War II and Modern Warfare. So, in some cases like mountain-climber Ralston, shark attack victim Vic Calandra and tsunami survivor Shenth Ravindra, the tale is one of beating mother nature. Others, like career criminal Willie Sutton and Luftwaffe pilot Franz von Werra, escaped from 'The Man.' In Sutton's case, that was the Eastern State Penitentiary; von Werra's an English POW camp. Peter Strelzyk and Guenther Wetzel escaped the East German regime in a homemade balloon; Dith Pran walked to freedom, escaping from the Pol Pot regime. In the Man-made Disasters chapters, accounts from Hindenburg survivors compliment those who escaped USS Squalus, Apollo 13 and the World Trade center. Other well-known escapes/escapees include Flight 1549, Entebbe, Dieter Dengler, the 'Great Escape,' Jonestown, Billy Hayes/Midnight Express, Papillon and so on.

Each account runs four-six pages with b&w and/or color photographs. Christianson does a good job of conveying the shock, terror, gritty determination and elation wrapped up in each event. Some of these stories were dramatized by Hollywood and it's interesting comparing the 'real' with the 'reel' version.

All in all, GREAT ESCAPES is an exciting view of how normal people handled themselves in very abnormal situations and ultimately triumphed. Recommended.

Book arrived damaged in shipping, and Scouter Page was completely fair and honest in handling this unfortunate occurrence. Good communication also. I would not hesitate to order from this dealer again. About the book: bought it for the school library... a preliminary scan revealed a wonderful book on a topic that high schoolers love to read about. Well illustrated, but not a great binding. We can fix with some book tape, but I suspect this one was intended for a gentle life atop a coffee table instead of a life of rough treatment at the hands of multiple users in a busy high school library.

Written with passion, clarity, and economy of word, I finished this remarkable book in one sitting...

The beauty of this work is that the author brings what was obviously a wealth of scholarship to each story, Throughly researched, what I found particularly fasinating was how he managed to avoid the obvious trap that seems common to this kind of work, sentimentality. Instead, he presents each story with what I felt was a loving committent to even the smallest of details. So much so that this writer felt a connetion to the people involved, their struggkles, fears, hopes, dreams, all of this. And most important, the author's methodology encourages the reader to draw their own conclusions; instead of, again, falling victim to any and all forms of sentimentality.

Without reservation, I would recommend this book to people with adventure as their mantra, to all the people who cherish good story-telling, and lastly, to anyone interested in reading about the inner workings of the human heart.